


middle of the winter with so far to go

by honeyno



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: 80s russian pop music references, Anxiety Attacks, Ice Skating, M/M, Masturbation, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn, emetophobia cw, figure skating AU, free programs - freeform, guys on ice!, katya! on ice, not a cis girls AU, oh my god they were rinkmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-08-22 04:17:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16590701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyno/pseuds/honeyno
Summary: He hasn’t skated in days. A week, perhaps. Katya may or may not have lost track of time two time changes and three cities ago. But he’s here, boots laced tight and blades freshly sharpened, looking out into a rink he’s never stepped on before and ready to go. As ready as he’ll ever be.or: the male figure skating AU no one ever asked for, in which skating away from your emotions is way easier than dealing with them





	1. chicago

**Author's Note:**

> this is some wonderful magic universe where gender continues to be made up and people use stage names on ice because anyone who tries to convince me that figure skating isn’t basically sharp drag is lying to themself.    
>  shoutout to M for enabling me and being this thing's first cheerleader   
>    
>  drag names and he/him pronouns throughout.   
>  title is from trixie's red side of the moon

Katya doesn’t recognize the song that’s blasting through the speakers when he walks out from the changing room and heads onto the rink. He’s early for his practice but a few people are skating already, way past their warm-ups, and it’s clear that Katya’s 9am had been given to him as an act of leniency which he cannot be offended by as his sleep-heavy eyes adjust to the bright lights in the rink, the stark white of the ice.

He hasn’t skated in days. A week, perhaps. Katya may or may not have lost track of time two time changes and three cities ago. But he’s here, boots laced tight and blades freshly sharpened, looking out into a rink he’s never stepped on before and ready to go. As ready as he’ll ever be.  

Since he last skated -- in Oslo, last week? -- he’d come home with an overstretched hip and a bronze medal, slept off that pain and jet lag amid packed boxes and suitcases, and then slept off the exhaustion from the move on a frameless mattress in his new, bare apartment in Chicago.

Same Katya, same boxes and suitcases, new city and a new coach.

It’s always been part of the deal, perfectly normal for an athlete with his promise to move around, to go wherever he has to go to be the best he can possibly be. Katya _knows_ that, intellectually, and knows that there’s nothing particularly unusual about a new person arriving early on a Monday morning to train with the group of skaters he watches dashing around the ice as he stands as close to the bleachers as possible having a full-blown existential crisis.

  
When he’d spoken to his new coach in Oslo, she’d told him she couldn’t wait to work with him right after one of her young trainees had kicked his ass. He’d given her his best smile while joking that yes, he clearly needed her help, as soon as possible, please. She’d laughed. It was easy, with the adrenaline of the competition still buzzing through him and the weight of a hard-earned, almost unexpected, medal around his neck. She’d seemed nice and approachable, nothing like the gruff, intimidating approach of his old, trusted coach.

Now, Katya can see her standing near the wall, her dark hair obscuring her face as she scribbles notes in a small notepad. She’s wearing luxurious looking fur-trimmed gloves, they’re bright red, and Katya loves her already. He can’t wait to hit the ice under her guidance, for practice this morning, and wherever it takes him next. It’s a new beginning -- a level up as he moves on to skate as a senior -- and it’s _thrilling_ , and he’s filled to the brim with excitement. He can’t wait. He’s been ready for this for a year. He’s ready to _go._

It’s just, right now, the thought of walking over to say “Hello, I’m here, where do we start?” also makes his gut twist in that familiar, horrible, first day of school way. He’ll be ready to _go_ in a minute.

It’d be rude to interrupt her, Katya reasons, and then heads in the exact opposite direction along the wall to watch the other skaters. He can bide his time a few more minutes, until this song ends or she looks up from her notepad, or the end of the world surprises them all and he’s granted mercy before he has to go make official introductions.

The unfamiliar music swells beautifully, underscored by the satisfying sound of accelerating blades against ice, and one of the skaters takes off into a perfectly acceptable triple salchow he makes look pretty effortless as he spins, until he lands it wrong, for some reason, and eats total shit.

He’s swearing before his body fully hits the ice, somehow.

“Get up, get up,” the coach calls as she watches him pull himself up over the thick plastic rims of her glasses. “Give me one more, come on.”

The skater shakes his head as he takes off to gain enough speed, and Katya laughs when he dashes past where he’s standing, still cursing under his breath. There’s a lot to be said about a figure skater with the mouth of a sailor. Katya appreciates the dichotomy.

He looks younger than Katya, but taller, and he skates with the kind of force Katya has always made up for with dancelike grace and performance. He’s also indistinct in his black sweater and leggings, short brown hair poking out underneath a beanie, and Katya wonders if he’d recognize him if he were wearing something shinier, if he were at his best and not in the middle of a frustrating Monday morning practice.

He must have a few junior medals, at least. Katya must have heard his name. He must be _someone._

His second attempt at the salchow goes miserably, a wobbly single that lands him straight on his ass. The coach sends him off for water and a break before he’s caught his breath enough to swear, this time. Instead, he just rolls his eyes at her and glides towards the exit, pulling his gloves off as he goes.

Katya realizes he’s blocking the exit when the skater’s already there, about ready to push past him.

“Open skate’s at noon,” the guy says, his eyes darting judgmentally down to Katya’s skates, and then back to his face. He stares for a moment, brown eyes shifting from irritation to almost-recognition. “Wait, are you--”

“Hi, my name’s Katya, and I’ll be training with you,” Katya grins, slipping into the heavy Russian accent which cracks him up when he’s nervous and sometimes makes him come across as funny to new people, except it backfires because the boy gets that freaked out expression and whips his head back towards his coach as if to say _did you seriously bring a Russian to train with us, what’s wrong with you, did they suddenly run out of ice on the Volga?_

Or that’s just how Katya’s racing, anxious mind interprets the second after the failed joke but either way, the boy’s look is entertaining, he’s so _intense,_ and for the second time in mere minutes, Katya’s compelled to laugh at him.

“Relax, I’m fucking with you,” he says, holding his hand out. “I’m from Boston. Still Katya, though.”  
  
The other skater nods and considers his hand, and then his shoulders drop in acceptance as he takes Katya’s hand, saying,

“Brian.”

For a second, Katya wonders how this absolute stranger knows his government name, until he realizes _Brian_ is pretty common and, okay, that’s could be funny eventually, if this new Brian ever talks to him again. Still, hearing the name does nothing to jolt Katya’s memory and he nods towards the ice in an unspoken question, searching for whatever alias he uses when blades are involved.

The other Brian gives his hand another squeeze and adds somewhat shily,

“Trixie. Hi.”  
  
  
  
The next time the other Brian actually talks to him, save for stray hellos and goodbyes at the rink, is a few weeks later while Katya is changing in the locker room, humming one of the truly awful, yet undeniably upbeat and motivating songs Michelle insists on playing for them during practice.

Katya’s sweater is halfway over his head when he hears someone walk in, and then, almost immediately, ask,

“What are you doing this afternoon?”

The question startles Katya enough that he gets his head stuck in his turtleneck, which would be embarrassing any day but is even worse when the voice presses,

“It’s Trixie,” which Katya knew because his accent is distinguishable enough, and, “Do you-- need _help?_ ”

Katya groans and yanks his sweater the rest of the way down his body, emerging flushed and with his hair sticking out in every direction, crackling with static.

“I’m nineteen years old, I can dress myself,” he says, and maybe sounds a little too sharp because Trixie stares at him, shrugs to convey _whatever_ and heads towards his locker.

Katya _should_ be making friends. The other senior skaters who train at the rink are cliquey, intimidating, and almost never around at the same time as him so that’s been a lost cause from the get-go. So far, the only friends he’s made in Chicago are the sweet old woman in the apartment below his who says good morning every day while he runs down the stairs on his way out for practice, and boy from the bakery where he gets his coffee. The boy only works four days a week, though, and has started stuttering around Katya and drawing smiley faces and messy flowers on his cup, which Katya guesses isn’t exactly friendship, or anything he’d ever have time for.

The juniors have been nice, for the most part, but they are also obviously all pretty tight-knit, if not as uninviting as the seniors. Most of them are actual, literal _children_ too, which is fine at practice and awkward when Katya wants someone to discuss the bakery guy’s sad attempts at drawing daisies with him. Maybe the nice Mrs. Burke would be down to chat with him about that if he showed up downstairs with cookies, or something.

Or, he could try to talk to Trixie, a real human teenager who’s just a few years younger than him, and actively trying to initiate a conversation. Katya’s packed all of his stuff by the time that train of thought arrives at _Just Be Civil_ station and he looks up, perhaps too quickly, to check if Trixie’s still there.

He is, with his back to Katya and headphones on, so maybe he’d given up in the meantime but Katya tries anyway, rewinding back to answer Trixie’s first question,

“I’m just gonna grocery shopping, all I have left in my fridge is soy milk and some ham that I _think_ changed color since the last time I looked it, plus I’ve been watching this really stupid show so I might also finish that--”

He trails off and is left to wonder if Trixie’s even listening for a split second but then he interjects,

“You don’t have any friends here yet, do you?”

Katya chokes out a laugh at that. “Do I sound _that_ depressing?”

“No I mean--” Trixie closes his locker and turns around to look at him. “I was gonna ask if you wanted company? It’s hard when you first move, I get it, so I figured…”

He sounds unsure, which is new to Katya. From what he’s seen so far in practice, Trixie is vocal about his shortcomings and quietly celebratory on his particularly good days; he’s usually surrounded by others, laughing and making them laugh during breaks, but Katya’s never seen him hesitate.

He wants to meet _that_ boy -- the one who is attuned to a near-stranger’s feelings and offers his company, and is smiling carefully at Katya as he fiddles with a loose string on the sleeve of his knit sweater.

“Sure,” he says finally, returning Trixie's smile as he zips up his bag. “As long as you really don’t mind grocery shopping because I was serious, I _could_ die of starvation by tomorrow.”

“That’d just be natural selection,” Trixie shrugs, leading the way out the door. “If all you have in your fridge really _is_ fake milk and ham.”

“Ooh, that’s my least favorite Dr. Seuss book,” Katya deadpans, and Trixie snaps back to stare at him, agape for a moment before he lets out a full, bright laugh, delighted and surprised.

They end up buying enough groceries to keep Katya alive at least another week, and then ignore all of them in favor of a pizza they probably shouldn’t have ordered. They discuss the advances of the bakery boy and talk shit about Michelle’s practice music selection, and Trixie stays until the afternoon shifts into a hazy, dark blue evening.

When he leaves, Katya puts away the rest of his groceries, and makes a note to tell Mrs. Burke that he’s made a second friend.  
  
  
  
That’s five years ago.

It’s hard to remember, sometimes, that it’s only been that long since Katya’s uncertain first weeks in Chicago, when it’d been unfamiliar, and lonely, and he’d felt as if he were walking blindly into a new life that would either destroy or reinvent him. It’s hard to remember there’d ever been a time when he’d been anxious to approach Michelle, when he’d questioned if moving to train with her had been the right idea and whether they’d ever work out.

When Katya wins silver at his first Grand Prix final, it’s Michelle at his side, holding his shaking hand in the soft red gloves she’d worn at his first practice under her fierce, ruthless guidance. She wears them again the first time he wins gold, and when he flubs a competition so horribly it throws him off for months, and when he wins an Olympic silver despite that, and when the boy from the bakery tells him this isn’t sustainable anymore while he’s fifteen hours ahead at practice in Japan and wants to throw up on the ice.

The only absolute constant is Michelle, her steady support and her gloved hands, through too many wins and losses and horrible long flights to keep track of. Katya’s stopped trying. Whenever he comes home to his Chicago apartment, he can see it all laid out neatly, in a makeshift gallery for no one but himself: it amounts to a wall of medals on nails in his bedroom, and a fame that seems too abstract until he does the occasional Instagram live during practice and the chat fills _heart emoji, fire emoji, skate emoji, people suggesting he do all sorts of inappropriate, physically impossible things to them with his skates on, peach emoji._

The thing is, Katya knows he’s a big deal, in a vague, general sense. Nothing should scare him. All he has to do is carry on, keep winning until his body quits on him, which could be six months from now, or never.

It’d be never if Katya had any say in it.

He’s between competitions when a journalist asks if he thinks there’s anything that could throw him off at this point, and Katya says _no, not right now, I don’t think so,_ automatic and determined because he believes it, and she doesn’t need to know he hasn’t really started working on next season’s programs yet. So he just says _no,_ which could be true, or an act of blind, almost manic hubris.

Fate, it turns out, is a dramatic, evil bitch and sends him the one thing that does throw him off disguised with a friendly face and the soft Midwestern accent Katya’s grown to appreciate over countless late nights and post-competition postmortem phone calls.

It’s late after a joint practice at their home rink when he follows Trixie off the ice, drained but fired up after watching Trixie’s last run through a routine that’s gotten unrecognizably better since the last time they’d skated together a few months ago.

“Like, when did you-- I’m not saying you’re not always good but that was _good_ good, you know,” Katya is saying, waving a hand enthusiastically in Trixie’s general direction. “You nailed that. And that early in the season? I mean--”

“Yeah, can’t wait to kick your ass in October,” Trixie says smugly, grinning at him before he disappears behind the door of his locker.

Katya freezes. _Of course._ There’s the one detail that’s been eluding him as he’s been riding the wave of his own successes, while Trixie’s been constantly there to pick his performances apart when he’d needed that or just deliver scathing criticism of everyone else’s costumes when all Katya’d wanted was a laugh. But that whole entire time, it’s always been Katya doing his thing, Trixie in his corner to cheer him on, Trixie in a literal league of his own working his own way up and never on the same roster.

Until now.

For the first time, he’s about to have to compete against Trixie who is in the best shape of his life, and growing more confident with his skill every time Katya watches him skate. He’s gotten stronger in the past few months, more consistent, and the fire behind his eyes is burning brighter than Katya’s ever seen it before. It makes sense.

He’s about to take on his first well deserved, hard-earned season as a senior, and Katya chooses to blame his busy schedule and one-track mind for completely, entirely forgetting that.

Or, choosing to forget. Ignoring completely until the last possible moment, whatever.

“Katya. You okay?”  
  
“What? Huh, yeah, just,” Trixie’s voice pulls him out of his reverie and he glances up, shooting him a grin he hopes comes across light and reassuring. “Reminiscing about the good ol’ times before you lost your baby fat and learned some new shit.”

Trixie’s laugh echoes in the disgustingly cold locker room.

“Don’t call me fat,” he fires back, immediate, and the knot in Katya’s stomach eases a little when he laughs along.

“Or a _baby,_ ” Trixie carries on, and then, when Katya doesn’t have a comeback, “What, are you scared you’re finally gonna have to face me?”

Which Katya isn’t. He’s _something,_ but not that. He can’t put a finger on what he is, except suddenly as anxious as he hasn’t felt since his last botched competition, when tackling the upcoming events had seemed like a whole new, grosser and scalier monster to fight.

“Please,” he says instead, because Trixie is his friend, not his therapist; and because he’s now also his challenger, adds, “I can outskate you with my eyes closed if I had to.”

“And here I thought you were gonna focus on trying to not break a hip,” Trixie hums, pushing his locker shut as a rimshot.

Katya swears at him and laughs again. He’s friends, distantly, with many of the people he competes against. He’s had continental breakfasts with several of them before going on to beat them the same afternoon, and it’d never once been a real issue when the chips are down and the skates - off.

While competing against the one person who’d watched his entire senior career almost objectively, with the bias of friendship but no stakes of his own, might be new and terrifying and odd at first, it could also be the push he’d needed to motivate him to develop his absolute best season yet.

Skating against Trixie doesn’t mean just skating to _beat_ Trixie.

It means skating to share a podium with Trixie, at Trixie’s first Grand Prix series, and the sudden, blindingly bright image of that draws a quiet gasp from Katya, surprising enough that he has no time to hold it back.

“What now?” Trixie presses. He’s by the door, scrolling distractedly through his phone, and ready to go.

Katya takes another second to look at him. This after-practice ritual has been routine since the very first time Trixie invited himself into Katya’s afternoon plans, and countless times after, but now it’s as if Katya is seeing a whole new person -- his friend but also a peer, an adult, the most thrilling challenge Katya has received in a while. The anxiety that settles below his ribs, he realizes, could also double as excitement if he let it live there.

“Nothing,” he says eventually, and slings his bag over his shoulder as he heads out after Trixie. _I’m excited to win with you_ isn’t something you just say to anyone, so he settles instead on,

“I’m excited I finally get to destroy you, that’s all."  
  
  
  
Before any of that can happen, Trixie falls miserably, disgustingly ill. He shows up for practice pale and shaky, holding on to a tumbler of tea that he drinks from, swallowing each sip down with a grimace as if it’s poison.

Michelle demands that Trixie stay off the ice and just work on conditioning in the morning as soon as she sees the state he’s in but Trixie says no thank you and insists he’s fine, and then coughs for a full minute before starting his warm up.

“You know phones were invented back in like, the 1600s, right?” Katya asks, looking up at him from where he’s scrolling through Twitter while stretched out in a full split. “You could’ve called Michelle and told her you’re dying, I’m sure she doesn’t wanna see your lifeless corpse attempting any quads today.”

“Eighteen,” Trixie says, and then grimaces again as his voice dissolves into a painful sounding cough. He has one leg up on the wall surrounding the ice and is breathing heavily through the simple stretch. “Fuck. _Eighteen_ hundreds, you dumb bitch.”

Katya drags himself up and pulls his skate guards off before stepping onto the ice to continue his warm up.

“Can’t believe your last words would be something so inflammatory and mean,” he sighs dramatically, shooting Trixie an exaggerated look of distress as he starts to skate away.

“Fuck you, I hope you trip.”

Katya’s fairly certain Trixie attempts to yell after him but it comes out in a rasp, his voice breaking in a way it hasn’t since he was sixteen. Katya laughs at him but only because he looks a little less miserable when they banter as usual. Trixie flips him off, which would look more threatening if he wasn’t wearing a dark pink fingerless glove.

Michelle takes that to mean that everyone is feeling alright enough to cut the crap and get to work, so she yells at them to focus and, properly scolded and determined to remain upright, Trixie joins the rest of his rinkmates on the ice.

They skate fine through warm ups in relative silence, though Katya finds himself unable to focus as well as usual, his attention drifting towards Trixie every few minutes to check if he’s still standing.

Trixie is clearly having one of his worst days in a very long time and yet, he’s skating just fine. If someone doesn’t know him, and isn’t a trained judge, Katya doubts they’d notice the way he’s just a hint slower than usual, heavy on his takeoffs, how he seems as if he’s trying to be steady on shaking legs.

It gets worse around an hour in, when Trixie cuts a spin short with his toe pick flying straight down, sending shards of ice flying around the blade.

He’s green in the face in a way Katya didn’t think was possible beyond figure of speech and breathing hard in short, ragged breaths.

“Fuck,” Trixie manages, and then he’s skating off towards the exit with the back of his hand pressed against his mouth.

Katya follows, because he can’t not. Michelle is at the exit already when Trixie barely makes it off the ice and towards the bench before he drops to his knees, and throws up into the trash can.

Katya wants to walk over, immediately, but Michelle stops him with her finger raised in a _wait_ gesture before she yells towards the rest of her skaters,

“Carry on, come on, quit staring.”

Trixie sits back on his shins and makes a small, pathetic sound as he wipes his chin with his glove.

“Thank you. Fuck. I’m sorry,” he says, and he sounds young and embarrassed. “I’m sorry, you were right, I shouldn’t have--”

“Yeah,” Michelle agrees, sternly, though she’s looking at him with that look Katya’s only seen her reserve for injured juniors and her own children. “I’ll lecture you when you come back tomorrow in top form. Can you take him home and make sure he takes some meds?”

She turns to Katya who nods immediately, and takes that as his cue to finally walk over to Trixie, and extend his hand to help him up.

“Try to keep him alive,” Michelle orders, but then she softens a little when she looks at Trixie and adds, “Feel better, alright? Get some rest.”

Katya guides Trixie to the locker room, ignoring his protests and insistence that he can walk _just fine,_ thank you very much, in exchange for keeping a steadying hand on his back.

“Can you change on your own?” Katya asks, halfway to serious though he grins reassuringly.

“Of _course_ I can,” Trixie snaps, but then he sighs as he sits down and begins to unlace his skates. “I’m sorry. It’s just-- fucking embarrassing. The whole fucking _scene--_ ”

“Who cares,” Katya says lightly as he changes quickly into a pair of battered sneakers. “You’re sick. Happens to everyone, you’re not immune to it just ‘cause you’re good at skating.”

Trixie shrugs and pulls off his gloves, putting them away dejectedly as if they’re single handedly responsible for his embarrassment.

“ _Good at skating_ , huh?” he echoes, and even attempts a smirk before trailing off to cough and drink more water.

“Yeah, I mean. I have eyes,” Katya says, matter-of-factly, and Trixie has to drop it there because he’s preoccupied with trying not to cough up a lung while stuffing his skates in his duffel bag.

“I feel fucking gross,” he announces once he’s ready to go.

“You look gross, too,” Katya fires back but when all Trixie can muster in return is a sad, bloodshot glare, he sighs, “Come on, let’s get you home. We can order soup and everything.”

The Uber ride back to Trixie’s place is quiet, and Katya keeps a careful watch on him the whole time as he travels with his eyes closed, hands gripping the strap of his bag as tightly as possible.

When they get there, Trixie says that he needs a shower, and Katya allows it under the condition that he keep the door unlocked in case he, _like, dies in the shower or whatever_. Katya does order soup while he’s gone, and then walks around Trixie’s small living room, taking stock of the pile of video games near the TV.

“Are you gonna stay a while?”

Katya startles a little and turns around to look at Trixie who’s reentered the room, now in sweatpants and a worn sweater and still just as pale. He’s about to say that he can go, and should probably head back to the rink as soon as the food gets here, but then he catches the hopeful inflection of Trixie’s question, the way he’s looking at Katya expectantly, with his lip caught in his teeth.

Michelle can survive the rest of practice without him, he decides.

“Sure,” Katya nods, making a bit of a show of plopping down on the couch and making himself comfortable. “She said to keep you alive, right? I’ll be your dutiful bedside nurse until you shuffle off this mortal coil or defeat the odds of science and miraculously return to full health.”

“You’re insane,” Trixie says, but he’s smiling just a little when he sits down next to Katya.

They try to play a video game for a while but staring at it makes Trixie sick again, so they settle on a movie he only half-watches once the food gets there. He manages to keep a little of it down, and Katya makes him promise he’ll attempt more later like the good, attentive nurse he is.

It’s later in the afternoon, the sun has already started to disappear behind a building across the street, when Trixie’s eyes start to flutter close and Katya begins considering that perhaps that would be the time to remind him to take more ibuprofen and then go home.

He’s about to suggest precisely that when Trixie stirs a little next to him, and resettles with his head on Katya’s shoulder.

“Hey, Katya,” he’s saying quietly, with his eyes still closed. “Can you tell me a story?”

Katya laughs. It’s not unlike them to hang out all day or be vulnerable around each other but Trixie’s not a _child,_ and even when he was younger, he’d never been the kind of person to snuggle or ask for a fairytale.

Most of the time, he expresses his care in sharp jokes and _thought of u_ texts accompanied with pictures from his travels, usually of semi-nude storefront mannequins or expensive-looking gift wrap lying on the ground next to a garbage can.

“Fuck you, I was serious,” he insists now, and then groans when he coughs again. “I’m _dying._ I want a story.”

“Alright, alright, um--”

Katya shifts to let him rest more comfortably against his shoulder, and racks his brain for for a myth that isn’t too gory or a legend that doesn’t involve too much incest to keep track of. He doesn’t have time to explain all of Russian folklore to a sedated Trixie either, he decides, so he settles for,

“Okay, so what you need to know is, there used to be this Georgian painter in the late nineteenth century who was… let’s say he was a decent painter. I don’t know if that’s important to the story but he understood art, like-- he _got_ it.”

Katya pauses for effect, and Trixie nudges his side to make him carry on.

“Alright, so anyway, he used to travel all around Europe ‘cause that’s what artists did back then and at some point he met this beautiful French actress. One of those turn of the century starlets, you know. She was _beautiful,_ talented, all of that _._ Adored.”

Trixie makes a little noise and Katya laughs,

“Yeah, told you it’s gonna be interesting. It’s a love story. So, they meet, and he’s instantly obsessed with her. I’d like to imagine he painted her all over the place, just… little sketchbooks, and big canvases, and napkins, all dedicated to her, all her face,”

“I don’t think they had paper napkins back then,” Trixie interrupts distractedly. His head is heavier in the space between Katya’s shoulder and chest now.

“Whatever, Tracy, he _invented_ paper napkins and then drew her on them. He was that in love. Just… all of his art and his being and everything was dedicated to her. I don’t think she paid as much attention as he did; she liked the man but… you know. She was a star, an unreachable muse, whatever you wanna call it.”

On the TV screen, a movie that played out without their attention fades to black and credits start to roll. Katya watches distractedly until Trixie pokes his side again.

“Does he do anything about it?”

“About what? Her attention? _Yeah,_ ” Katya laughs a little for emphasis. “That’s the best part of the story. He found out where she was staying once, at some fancy hotel, hopefully she told him and he didn’t stalk her, that would ruin the mood. Let’s say he _legally_ found out… and okay, he knew that she really loved flowers. They were her favorite thing. So he went and sold his house, and all of his paintings, everything he owned, and used that money to buy as many flowers as he could.”

Trixie makes another small sound, almost like a gasp, and if Katya didn’t want to finish the story, he’d probably make fun of him for being so into it. He stores that away for some other time.

“He shipped all the flowers to her hotel and filled the entire square outside her window with roses. Millions of roses, they say. In the morning, when she looked out the window, she saw the square filled with roses, just for her, and he was in the middle of them, just… waiting for her to come down, I guess. And she did. I don’t know if they lived happily ever after, he was completely broke and she was still living her glamorous life but... They shared that moment, you know? With all those roses.”

Katya finishes with as much pathos as his quiet, bedside voice allows, and Trixie actually exhales a little laugh. It’s all Katya could’ve aimed for.

“There’s no way that happened,” Trixie objects sleepily.

“They both actually existed,” Katya says as he sweeps his thumb soothingly along his arm. “So I like to think that it did.”

Trixie doesn’t argue with that. His breathing has slowed down and Katya falls silent to allow him to finally doze off. When he’s sure Trixie won’t wake up if he moves, he pulls out his phone and types a few quick texts.  
  
**To Michelle V.  
** (19:22:07pm)  
T’s ok. Sleeping. 

(19:25:00pm)  
Also, I know what I want for my SP.

(19:25:11pm)  
_Brian M. sent a link:_ [ _YouTube.com/…_](https://vocaroo.com/i/s13fiWBOL796)


	2. laval

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Assignments for the Grand Prix get announced in the middle of the summer, when Michelle’s cramped, sunlit office is unbearably hot, and Katya wants to crawl out of his skin before they get the actual lists.  
>    
>    
> They’d submitted requests a while back, but fifty skaters saying _Hey, Japan would be incredible, let me skate the NHK please_ has never really amounted to a rock solid promise for decent placement and the prospect of falling somewhere in the forgettable middle or having no time to recoup between events is real, terrifying, and Katya is _sweating_.  
>   
> (or: the grand prix begins, and katya continues to skate around his feelings)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gender continues to be made up, and we meet violet who uses she/her pronouns.   
>    
>    
>  **content warning** for super mild discussion of weight/eating habits but just in passing; they’re athletes, it happens.

Assignments for the Grand Prix get announced in the middle of the summer, when Michelle’s cramped, sunlit office is unbearably hot, and Katya wants to crawl out of his skin before they get the actual lists.

They’d submitted requests a while back, but fifty skaters saying _Hey, Japan would be incredible, let me skate the NHK please_ has never really amounted to a rock solid promise for decent placement and the prospect of falling somewhere in the forgettable middle or having no time to recoup between events is real, terrifying, and Katya is _sweating._

Violet is sitting with her pale, skinny legs flung over the armrest of a shiny armchair in the corner, and Katya imagines her skin must be fully sticking to the worn pleather where it pokes out from her denim cutoffs. She looks stone-cold, her face schooled into a perfect expression somewhere between carelessness, stoicism and complete psychopathy. If he doesn’t look too hard, he can pretend he doesn’t notice her chewing on the inside of her lip while she stares down at her phone.

Near Katya’s feet, on the ground rather than on the couch next to him, Trixie is hunched over his crossed legs, methodically ripping the sleeve of a coffee cup into a pile of tiny cardboard confetti. Unlike Violet, he’s not even remotely trying to pretend that he’s not shaking.

Out of everyone in the room, he’s the only one going through the process for the first time.

 “What are you so afraid of?” Violet asks, punctuating the question with the _click_ sound of her phone locking. “You’re gonna skate _somewhere_.”

Katya watches Trixie’s hands still. He doesn’t answer for a second and Katya’s tempted to go ahead and call out Violet’s own nervous tics but then Trixie draws out a breath and shrugs,

“That I’m gonna end up in a group with you and a bunch of Japanese elf people who were landing triples while I was still taking the two-hour bus ride to Milwaukee for Saturday open skate?” all at once, as if it’s all he’s been thinking about since they came into the office, probably even earlier.

Violet might be about to say something, attempt encouragement, perhaps, but then Trixie tilts his head back to glance at Katya and carries on,

“Or like, that I’m gonna have to skate against _you_ and all of the real Russians who have something to _prove_ to you, personally, and are out for blood and--”

“So you wanna do a grand prix event against pre-schoolers at a Milwaukee open skate and no real competition?” Katya summarizes, mindful to keep a smile aimed at the top of Trixie’s buzzed-for-the-summer head.

There might be a time for a tough love pep-talk later, but it’s not now.

Trixie deflates, exhaling a long sigh as he returns to his confetti project.

“Shut the fuck up. I just wanna--” he pauses, searching for the right word. _Win,_ Katya doesn’t offer, because that goes unspoken between them. “Do good.”

“And you will,” Violet shrugs, brazen in a way Katya has come to learn means she cares but can’t quite come up with a way to express that. “Breathe.” 

That would be good advice if there was any air to breathe in the office. The air conditioner in the corner sounds like it might have given up about eight years ago.

The air finally moves when Michelle pushes the door open and walks into the room. It’s a brief relief, and followed by the immediate realization that this means she’s off the phone with whoever the hell it is that makes those calls, and that she’s about to deliver news.

To Katya’s left, Violet shifts to sit properly. Trixie is nearly frozen, save for his shaky grip around a piece of cardboard. Katya scoots down to sit at the very edge of the couch, and places a light, unobtrusive hand on Trixie’s shoulder. Trixie stills almost unnoticeably under the touch, and Katya commits to it, pressing his fingertips against tense muscle in encouragement.

“Alright, no one’s died,” Michelle says as she sits behind her desk, adjusting her glasses while she settles. She looks amused while she takes in the full picture of her visibly nervous students. “It’s all _good._ I think you’re all gonna be pleased with this. I know I am.”

“Well?” Violet prompts. She’s letting herself look impatient now as her red nails drum an anxious pattern against her knees.

“Okay, Vi, you get to get Skate America out of your way first,” Michelle starts. Violet accepts that with a short nod and almost, _almost_ a smile. Skating for a home audience is always good, and her Skate America track record is wonderful, so there can’t be too much to worry about there.

“--and then all three of you are going to Canada,” Michelle continues.

Trixie exhales sharply, in _maybe_ relief, bowing his head down. Katya has to laugh. This is good-- this can only be good. They don’t know who else will be there yet, of course, but the three of them in one event _could_ be an absolutely unstoppable feat for anyone else and all Katya can do is laugh while he squeezes Trixie’s shoulder again. 

“Your worst nightmare,” he teases, and even Violet chimes in gleefully,

“Gonna debut with friends, isn’t that _just_ terrible.”  

Trixie shakes his head. His neck’s grown redder but he’s shaking less under Katya’s hand now.

“No, this--” he laughs, just a little. “That’s great. Friends are great.”

Michelle clears her throat, probably a bit too pointedly, to interrupt. The collective silence is immediate but when they look at her, she’s smiling in a way she has always stored away for only her best skaters, for only when she’s pleased.

“It has the potential to be a great event for all of you,” she says, diplomatic as ever, and then breaks the rest of the assignments down for them.

Katya gets his coveted spot for Japan, which Trixie celebrates by reaching back to give the hand at his shoulder an awkward half-pat, half-high five. Katya’s head is reeling. Hearing the assignments officially always makes everything feel more urgent, like suddenly, he’s working towards dates in his calendar and not the vague concept of an impending grand prix. 

Trixie gets Russia.

“I can’t believe you’re going to the motherland without me,” Katya laments, immediate, choosing to ignore the stern look Michelle is giving him over her glasses. He puts on a bit of an accented Russian affectation, and it makes Trixie snicker.

“I’ll tell your _bratya_ you don’t miss them at all, traitor,” he promises, and that, in turn, also cracks Violet up.

“Go have your discussion while you’re changing,” Michelle interjects. “You’ll have the rest of the assignments by the end of today but trust me, you’ll be… even happier, I think. Now go get ready to work.”

She pauses for a second, and the smile she’s giving her trainees fades as she glares at the air conditioner.

“It’s cold downstairs, at least.”  
  
  
  
The upset and discussion of the announcement only lasts the twenty minutes it takes them to change and head out for warm ups. Violet announces her plan to break both of their legs so she can have, “like, practically _no_ real competition for Skate Canada”.

Katya takes that as an opportunity to launch into his best Nancy Kerrigan impression, weeping a loud string of _why, why, whyyyy_ as he laces up his boots. He turns to Trixie wide-eyed, with his face twisted in a grotesque frown, and Trixie groans, defeated.

He rolls his eyes as he feeds him the line Katya is clearly waiting for, but he is, despite himself, smiling just a little.

“What hit you?”

“Some big! Black! _Stick!_ ” Katya delivers, and he manages to act devastated for another second before he cracks up, letting out a loud laugh.

“Please don’t ever do that again,” Violet says in mock disgust and then she’s off, ranting quietly about bad juju as she goes with the locker room door swinging after her.

Katya’s still laughing when he stands up to follow her.  

“Whatever, it was funny,” he insists. There isn’t an immediate reaction from Trixie. When Katya turns to look at him, he’s standing by his closed locker, unmoving. “You okay, Tracy?”

Trixie gives him half a smile. It’s one of those moments where Katya notices just how young he looks when he’s not skating, when he’s quiet and preoccupied and his eyes seem as if he’s thinking about a million things at once. His first season as a senior has aged him already, he’s leaner and stronger than he’s ever been and lately, with his short summer hair, he looks more like an adult than ever. Now, though, Katya sees him in a flash as the apprehensive boy who’d stood right where he’s standing as he’d halfheartedly offered his friendship.

“It’s just…. All getting really real now, you know,” Trixie admits, voice softening in a rare moment of absolute earnest. “But I’m really glad you’ll both be there for Canada-- whatever that means for scoring.”

That sounds dangerously close to self-doubt, and Katya won’t allow it.

“Yeah,” he interrupts, grinning brightly at him as he pulls his arm up in a light stretch. “And the afterparty will be _lit._ ”

“You’re way too old to be saying that,” Trixie quips and just like that he’s _back,_ out of whatever pit he was staring down into, and ready to carry on.

After that, training continues as usual, with emotions and fears stuffed to the deepest, darkest part of the bottom of Katya’s literal and metaphorical locker and replaced with carefully crafted excitement.

The next few months blur into a constant, uninterrupted routine: Katya’s morning jog to practice, skating for hours, conditioning, just enough sleep to keep him alive, more skating, and more, until the program he’d shown at Nationals is forgotten, reimagined, fixed beyond recognition.

Barely anything happens outside the perimeter between Katya’s apartment and the rink. Violet and Trixie keep almost identical schedules and observing the growth of their respective programs is about as thrilling as seeing his own develop. It also serves as a great motivator.

Katya is sometimes tempted to spend a day in his bathtub and reason with Michelle that watching videos from yesterday’s practice should count as work, but that’s when he forces himself to think about all they’re doing: about how confident and consistent Trixie’s quads have been getting, or about Violet’s Ina Bauer which is, on a good day, hotter than most porn he’s seen, and it gets him out of bed and to the rink.

Training with the two of them is also great for Katya’s social life in that if he didn’t, he wouldn’t _have_ one. Most of his favorite conversations happen at the side of the rink, while one of them is running through a full routine and all they have to do is step back and watch.

It’s an evening like that when Violet slides up to sit at the bleachers next to him, immediately propping her feet up on the seatback in front of her.

On the ice, Trixie is working his way through his short program, a lyrical daydream set to gorgeous, melancholy folk music that makes Katya miss mountains he’s never seen and small towns he’s never visited. It also makes him wish he could know Trixie, in a way he can’t begin to imagine; in a way that’s all about what keeps him up at night and where he drafts postcards to that he doesn’t send. There’s an ache in the music that Trixie doesn’t talk about, history he only skates about, and Katya wishes he could know beyond choreography.

“When are you gonna talk to him?”

Katya blinks and shakes his head to clear it, turning to glance at Violet.

“Huh?”  
  
“Come on,” Violet says, motioning vaguely towards the ice. Down there, Trixie is halfway through a step sequence under the swelling sound of a wailing violin.

Katya watches him for another second, until Violet moves her foot to poke his thigh with the tip of her skate guard.

“I’ve no idea what you mean,” he says finally.

“ _Trixie,_ ” Violet insists, as if that clarifies anything, shooting another pointed look at Trixie right as he finishes a combination with a pretty solid triple loop.

“He’s-- down there?”  
  
“Katya.”

Violet gives him an exasperated sigh and actually goes the extra distance and reaches up to rub her brow bone with the pads of her gloved thumbs as if just getting through to Katya is some extraordinary feat of patience.

Katya stares at her, expressionless.

“Please, I’ve known you for a billion years,” Violet presses. “I don’t know why you’ve _suddenly_ decided to notice him like that but, duh _,_ good morning, glad your cognitive functions are all intact and you could join us here. You gotta talk to him.”

It’s not sudden at all, really. Katya’s been aware of that quieter, softer side of Trixie that he wants to get to for longer than he cares to admit and Violet’s right, it would be insane not to actually, literally _see_ him as he is, too. There’s a lot Katya is seeing, and a lot that he wants, and he’s not about to give Violet any of that.

“I have no idea what you’re implying,” he repeats instead, making a point to catch her gaze and hold it. People only look away when they’re lying.

Violet stares him down in return, her lips pressed into a displeased line.

“Sure,” she says finally, shaking her head. She turns to watch right as Trixie finishes the routine, head thrown back and his arms crossed at his chest. He’s breathing heavily and for a second, before Michelle can break the moment with feedback, Katya indulges in imagining what this ending will look like with the raised stakes of a competition, under the roar of a crowd.

“That was fucking hot, Tracy,” Violet hollers, hands cupped around her mouth, and pulls him back to reality. Trixie turns to grin at her while he skates off towards Michelle at the exit. He winks and blows her a kiss as he does a small, stupid thrusting motion with his hips in response. 

“See?” Violet adds, pointedly, turning back to Katya. “It’s not hard. _Talk_ to him.”

She’s already walking off when Katya mutters,

“I have nothing to talk to him about.”

And he wants to believe that, so he doesn’t talk.   
  
  
  
The mood at the rink changes drastically the week Violet leaves with Michelle for Washington. There’s just a little sense of lawlessness that comes from not having Michelle at practice but that’s overpowered by the stark realization that with them gone, the Grand Prix series is just a few short days away from starting officially. 

It means that in just a week, it’s going to be Trixie and Katya off to compete, too, so it’s hard to consider slacking off for even a moment.

They watch the Skate America short program with outrageously low quality on Trixie’s phone perched precariously on the wall surrounding the rink, and spend the first half trying to pretend they’re still working while distractedly listening to the commentary. The moment Violet’s group comes out to warm up, though, Katya skates to an admittedly overdramatic stop and perches up on the wall, grabbing the phone.

“Violet looks like a Ziegfeld follies showgirl who accidentally grew knife-feet,” he announces, and then, when Trixie yells a half-laugh at that, adds, “She’s _beautiful_. Oh--”  
  
Katya squints at the screen and brings it closer to his eyes.

“Yeah, you gotta see this. Someone’s out here _literally_ in a velvet turtleneck.” 

That gets Trixie to wander over. He sits next to Katya on the wall, and they watch Violet get to a comfortable first place by the end of the event, a few points ahead of the Russian in the turtleneck. Katya keeps the hand holding the phone resting on Trixie’s thigh, and reasons that it’s the only way to share the screen.

The following day, they watch Violet’s free skate at Katya’s apartment, in HD on his TV and it’s better in all ways except that he doesn’t have a reason for proximity. Instead, there’s a bowl of upsettingly low-cal veggie sticks on the couch between them that forces him to keep a respectful distance. In fairness, Katya _had_ offered to make some delicious, buttery popcorn, which Trixie declined with an exaggerated sigh and,

“I don’t have your freakish metabolism but I _do_ have jumps to land next week and honey, my quad salchow? I went in for a weigh-in yesterday and I _saw_ a _cow,_  hooo- _ney_.”  

Which is, in Katya’s opinion, complete bullshit, and he lets Trixie know as much, but only after he’s done cursing him out for the truly terrible joke through a fit of laughter.

He settles for veggie sticks anyway, and then forgets about them entirely when the event starts. The first half is shaky and mostly unsurprising, so they spend the majority of it talking over the commentary and unpacking everyone’s costume and music choices. 

Save for Trixie drawing in a sharp breath through his teeth and Katya fully wincing when a skater falls devastatingly, they don’t acknowledge mistakes. Katya’s not exactly superstitious, but he’s also not about to shittalk anyone’s performance while knowing full well it’s about to be him out there with his competitors discussing him over bland snacks in a week. That changes, just a little, when Violet’s group takes the ice. It’s not exactly like they’re meaner now, but it is their friend against four others, and it’s only fair that they agree that everyone else is making bad choices while Violet, irresistible, clad in purple and red and too many sequins to count, is fantastic and wonderful.

She’s still fantastic and wonderful when she psychs herself out and downgrades one of her jump combinations to a sole tentative double, which gets Trixie to watch the rest of her otherwise flawless routine through his fingers as if it’s a bizarrely beautiful horror movie.

Katya assures him that she’s still gonna be just fine, and he’s ultimately proven right when she places second, earning a respectable silver just about two points under the same bald Russian in another opulent velvet turtleneck.

They take to filling their group chat with _medal emoji sent with confetti,_ a string of pink hearts surrounded by glitter (courtesy of Trixie) and “You’re my favorite circus acrobat whore on ice” (courtesy of Katya) while they watch Violet accept her medal. She texts back much later, when the veggie sticks have been eaten and Trixie has moved to sit on the floor so he can fully face Katya while he talks about the country music archive where he’d found his short program music, a topic that Katya has absolutely no inherent interest in except Trixie seems to find it truly fascinating, and he’s been monologuing about it for several minutes, and Katya’s content just watching him go off. Music’s alright too, he supposes.  
 

> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Violet**
> 
> (18:05:12)  
>  I knew I hated all Russians for a reason
> 
> (18:05:18)  
>  _Violet disliked a text from Katya Z_  
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Trixie**
> 
> (18:05:25)  
>  don’t listen to him you were great !!!!!
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Katya**
> 
> (18:05:31)  
>  Still a whore tho.
> 
> (18:05:46)  
>  We’re very proud of you.
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Violet**
> 
> (18:06:02)  
>  _three purple heart emoji_
> 
>   **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Trixie**
> 
> (18:06:17)  
>  no seriously you kicked ass we love u !
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Violet**
> 
> (18:06:25)  
>  _three purple heart emoji_
> 
> (18:06:31)  
>  thanks!
> 
> (18:07:12)  
>  honestly could’ve been better but i got scared ( _eyeroll emoji)_ that just gives me more motivation to kill u both next week tho ( _blushing smile, peace sign emoji_ )
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Trixie  
> **   
>  (18:07:22)  
>  work i cant wait
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Katya  
> **   
>  (18:07:31)  
>  I love dying.

Then Violet stops answering for a while and later, when Trixie’s already left, she calls Katya from her hotel room to really talk over the event. Katya assures her that she was absolutely great, indulges her when she spends a few minutes rightfully bitching about Russians, and lightheartedly admits he’s both antsy and impatient to finally get to next week. 

Violet takes that as an opportunity to ask,

“Yeah, how’s training _without me_ going?” and Katya plays dumb and talks to her about his most recent practice in excruciating detail, making a point of not mentioning Trixie at all.

  
The following week comes way too quickly. In Katya’s mind, there’s not nearly enough time between that phone call with Violet and the next Wednesday morning when they touch down, sleep deprived and bleary-eyed, in Montréal.

The actual city where the event is taking place is another bus ride away, and Katya experiences the rest of the journey like a strange, hazy half-dream on a too-cold morning.

They settle into the hotel -- in small but blessedly private single rooms all on the same floor -- and then Michelle takes mercy on them and pushes their scheduled first practice for the early evening. Katya barely says thank you, and then he’s back in his room to take a long, blissfully dreamless nap. It’s the last time he’ll get to rest until the event is over, and as though his body knows that, he sleeps straight through the day until Trixie bangs on his door to wake him up for practice. 

The dinner that follows after practice is fun, an unofficial impromptu get-together for all the skaters who are staying at the hotel which turns into as much of a party in the hotel bar as they can manage with an impending 6am wake up call, a bunch of minors, and basically no drinking.

Katya and Violet get to introduce Trixie to a few people they know from other competitions, and then Katya spends his time slipping in and out of conversations in English, and French, and Russian, as much for the other athletes’ benefit as it is so he can show off, a little.

The next time he turns around to look for Violet and Trixie, Violet is nowhere to be seen, while Trixie’s at the bar, by himself, overlooking the weird congregation of mingling skaters. Katya excuses himself from the conversation he’s half-participating in with pleasantries about how he’ll catch up tomorrow at breakfast _,_ and then walks over to join him.

He’s not done sitting down when Trixie shoots, wonderfully deadpan, 

“You come here often?”

Katya chokes out an almost laugh.

“That’s supposed to be my line if I’m approaching you.”

“Bitch, do I look like I spend my time _meeting strangers at bars_?”

Katya turns to face him, and makes a show of taking in his appearance. Trixie’s wearing worn jeans and a Team USA hoodie that’s about two sizes too big. The sleeves reach his fingertips in a way that seems too much like a deliberate style choice to be written off as carelessness. He’s let his hair grow just a little longer than it’d been in the summer.

“You _could_ , I don’t know your life” Katya shrugs finally. “I’m sure plenty of strangers would like to meet you.” 

Trixie laughs.

“You’re right,” he says, mock thoughtful. He’s almost smirking when he adds, “You’ve _no_ idea what I do in the dark of the night.”

“I don’t particularly wanna know, either,” Katya scoffs and he manages to sound jokingly dismissive without having to truly analyze how much he means that.

“Too bad, I was just about to say you should join me and find out sometime,” Trixie hums, and just when Katya’s brain is about to short-circuit, he cracks up and hops off the stool. “Are you ready to go? I’m going to bed.”

“Offended you’re not gonna stick around and indulge my stranger at a bar fantasy,” Katya says, hoping to God he still comes off light and jokey. “But yeah. Coming.”

They sneak off without really saying goodbye to anyone, which is acceptable when they’ll see everyone again in a few short hours, and then ride the elevator back to their floor in silence. In the stark overhead lighting, Trixie looks more tired than before. 

They don’t really say anything until they’re outside Trixie’s room and he’s breaking the silence with,

“I’ll see you at six in the goddamn morning, bitch.”

“I’ll eagerly await your wake up knock on my door,” Katya assures him, nodding.

He doesn’t see it coming at all when Trixie takes a step closer to him and pulls him into a tight, all-encompassing hug. Katya never thinks about how much taller Trixie is until he’s that close. There’s a split second of surprise and then he relaxes into the hug, moves to wrap his arms around Trixie in return. It feels a lot like he might be doing this for his own benefit more than anything else, so Katya lets it go on for as long as Trixie sees fit. 

“Is it okay that I’m, like, really fucking scared?” he’s asking somewhere near Katya’s shoulder, and it gets Katya to exhale a laugh. 

“Yeah. Yeah, I’d be worried if you weren’t. You’ll be great” he promises quietly, giving Trixie a tighter, reassuring squeeze before he pulls back.

When he catches Trixie’s eyes, he’s just slightly flushed, and giving him an almost embarrassed smile.

“Thanks, Katya,” he says finally as he holds up the key card to unlock his door. “Goodnight.”

“Night, Trixie,” Katya nods, and then he waits until he disappears into his room to walk away.  
  
  
  
Violet corners him during the shared Thursday morning practice, while there’s about eleven people on the ice and Katya can’t really go anywhere when she skates up to match his pace and then turns to move backwards while practically blocking his path.

“What do you want, Vi?”

“Someone told me you and Trixie left together last night, what’s that about?” Violet asks, and she’s actually beaming at him, her eyes glinting as if she’s acquired some incredible piece of hot gossip. 

Katya swizzles around to go past her but he knows she won’t let it rest so he explains,

“We left at the same time ‘cause it was getting late-- and he was bored after you took off... where _did_ you go?”  
  
“That’s none of your business,” Violet says, smirking slightly. Katya regrets not looking around to see who else was gone when she’d disappeared.

“Gross. You’re garbage,” he announces and then softens a little when he adds, “Nothing happened. We talked a little, he’s nervous, you know.”  
  
Violet nods and turns to watch Trixie who’s at the other end of the ice, working his way through a few jumps. He seems focused, steady.

“Well, I hope you told him you think he’s beautiful and he’s gonna do just fine,” she concludes, and grins at Katya, as if to let him know she’s entirely on his side.

“I told him some of that,” he nods, and skates away to finish his warm up before she can question him more.

  
Katya does sort of tell Trixie he looks beautiful right before Trixie heads out with the first group of skaters during the short program event. Trixie is standing in the walkway that leads out into the arena, pale and wide-eyed as he listens to the jumbled sound of the audience chattering away while the DJ blasts, of all things, Sorry by Justin Bieber over the speakers.

The dark maroon of his trousers fades through magenta into a baby pink around the high collar of his blouse, and the entire costume is encrusted with stones in pink and yellow that twist in a sensible paisley pattern and give the whole thing just a touch of country. It’s wonderfully Trixie in that if anyone else were to attempt to pull it off, they’d look ridiculous. He doesn’t.

“You look so fucking great,” Katya announces as he joins Trixie to lean against the wall of the walkway. “They’re not _ready._ You’re gonna kill it.”

 “You know you’re supposed to be rooting for _yourself_ right?” Trixie remarks, letting out a laugh.  

Katya rolls his eyes.

“Take the compliment, Tracy,” he insists, and then repeats fervently, “No one’s prepared for how fucking good you are.”

This time, Trixie just smiles at him and mouths a _thanks._ Katya reaches over and closes his hand over Trixie’s tense, curled in fist. He lingers for a second, until Trixie’s group gets called out for their six minute warm up, and then lets go.

“Have fun,” he grins, instead of any other words of encouragement, and it makes Trixie’s face light up.

“Yeah, I will,” he promises and then he’s off to show the rest of the world what Katya already knows.

Trixie skates last in his group. He starts out with a hesitant spiral while the music is soft and melancholy and Katya watches him take off from his semi-hidden spot at the entrance to the arena with a twisted stomach.

The audience seems to get on board with it when the underlying percussion in the music kicks in and Trixie launches, searching hands reached out, into his first sequence. It’s dramatic but earnest, the kind of performance that captivates attention despite his uncertain, cautious start. He moves like a man on a quest, seemingly always one step behind something just out of his reach. It’s a vivid, full story, like a campfire tale that keeps sending shivers down Katya’s spine.

Trixie makes his first triple axel look effortless, and the crowd screams when he lands it, ice flying around the glistening blade of his skate.

It’s all he’d needed.

The rest of his jumping passes are just as convincing, even when he steps out but that’s at the end of a quad flip, so no one in the crowd seems to care as they rightfully applaud, anyway. Katya doesn’t care either. 

He cares for that constant, underlying need in the story Trixie is telling, the unending race towards whatever he’s chasing that comes through in his step sequence. The music grows under the last seconds of the routine and Trixie is all but flying now, unshaken by the few missteps that must come from the adrenaline, from whatever is on his mind as he gives everything he has to offer to the audience and judges. 

Trixie spins a moment too long and ends, head thrown back and chest heaving under his crossed arms, just a beat after the music.

Michelle will care for that, and the judges will, but all Katya can do from his spot is join in with the audience when they scream and clap for him. Trixie’s flushed face breaks into a bright smile as he waves a little at the crowd after taking a quick bow. He’s still beaming, and shaking his head in something like disbelief as he leaves the ice to meet Michelle.

His score puts him miles ahead of the rest of his group, and Katya cheers for his lead, even as him and Violet prepare to head out and outscore him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to M for her continuous support, D for fact checking skating stats for me, and Dandee for cursing me out when i write bad jokes


	3. laval, still

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey kids, please note the change in the rating! don't tell tumblr but this content is now nsfw!    
> 

The end of the day sees Katya in the lead, just a few points ahead of Violet only because she missteps and downgrades a jumping pass in an otherwise spotless performance. She’ll come back ready to overcompensate and prove herself in her free skate tomorrow and knowing that, Katya is grateful for his lead, as temporary as it may be.

Trixie trails behind, having fallen to fourth place behind a Korean skater that seemingly comes out of nowhere to dazzle with a surprisingly good short program.

“It’s _such_ a small difference, though,” Violet is saying, manicured fingers spreading across the screen of her phone as she zooms in to study the score table she’d found online.

From his spot in the middle of the carpeted floor, Katya gives her a long, overly exasperated groan. They’d ducked out after the busy dinner at the hotel to hang out in his room, just the three of them, away from score talk, nerves and everyone else’s pre-free skate jitters.

“No skate talk, come on,” he starts, but then Trixie’s shifting from where he’d burrowed himself amid all four of Katya’s hotel-issued pillows to look over Violet’s shoulder, damn near crawling across the queen sized bed and Katya trails off, distracted, for some reason. Trixie looks over the table for a moment, chewing on his bottom lip in concentration.

“Listen, _you_ might not need to hear this but I could actually—”

“And you free skate is so fucking good!” Violet interjects enthusiastically, and then she puts her phone down, turning around to look at Trixie. “I’ve no idea what his is like, obviously, but I _know_ yours is better so…”

Trixie laughs, rolling his eyes.

“Michelle would kill me if I got in the way of her seeing us share a podium,” he nods, as if that’s the only reason to care about it. Katya pictures the specific way Michelle shakes her head when she’s disappointed, and reasons that Trixie might very well be correct to prioritize that.

“Yeah, she really needs a new picture to frame for her desk,” he says thoughtfully. “So don’t fuck it up.”

“Great advice, thanks, I won’t,” Trixie says flatly and then busies himself with opening another packet of fruit snacks.

There’s a long stretch of silence, interjected only by the sound of Violet’s nails rapid-fire against her screen, and it’s familiar and comfortable. Katya’s content to sit in it and just watch his friends hanging out in their team sweaters and worn pyjamas until his mind starts to drift back to the impending event tomorrow, and then to every other thought he’s been trying to compartmentalize and avoid, and he can’t really afford to go there when he’s not alone to panic properly. Not that he really wants to go there either way.

“This is the most boring sleepover I’ve ever been to,” he announces instead, just loud enough to get their attention back.

“Girl, you invited us,” Violet shrugs, making a sweeping gesture to point out that they are very much in his room.

“Your party fucking sucks, Katya,” Trixie agrees, putting on the worst 8th grade mean girl voice Katya’s ever heard. He’s already cracking up when Trixie carries on, high pitched and dead serious, “I’m telling _everyone_ at cheer practice tomorrow and then no one’s gonna like you, _ever again!_ ”

“I don’t know what you want from me, Violet’s already got her ears pierced so we can’t do that,” Katya starts, equally as dramatic, which gets Violet to crack up even as Trixie purses his lips to keep up his bitchy cheerleader act. “And I mean, we _could_ play spin the bottle but—”

“I’m not fucking kissing either one of you,” Violet says, cutting him off, and Katya makes a mental note to build her a statue or at least a small commemorative plaque as a symbol of his gratitude. He has no idea where he would’ve gone with that if she hadn’t stopped him. Violet shoots him a knowing look that he pretends to miss entirely.

“Oh, so you’re not actually trying to hook up with _everyone_ in this hotel,” Trixie asks, losing the mean girl voice in exchange for a suggestive lilt that makes Violet roll her eyes again. “I was starting to wonder, after last night—”

“I know, she wouldn’t tell me _who,_ it’s horrible,” Katya agrees.

“I mean, there’s only so many people it _could_ be, let’s see—”

Violet makes a loud, nondescript noise to drown Trixie out and hits his arm with one of the pillows which causes him to gasp in offense and shoot her a completely scandalized look.

“It’s none of your business!” she insists, and she’d look angry if she wasn’t cracking up again, this time at Trixie’s gobsmacked reaction to getting hit.

“I didn’t realize there was gonna be a sexy pillow fight, I would’ve worn my cute pyjamas,” he returns finally, rubbing his arm.

“It’s not sexy if I’m fighting you,” Violet argues and Trixie shrieks and calls her a horrid bitch before dissolving into laughter.

From behind his phone, Katya takes that moment as the perfect opportunity to snap a photo of the two of them: unsuspecting, red-faced and laughing, cross-legged in the middle of his bed in their matching sweaters. It’s picture perfect, like the freeze frame ending of an old sitcom, and Katya stares at them for another second, commits them to memory just like this.

He then swipes a filter on it, tags their usernames and types “Hate them both.” before putting the picture up on his Instagram story.

The laughter dies down.

“God, you’re stupid,” Trixie sighs as he catches his breath, and it sounds an awful lot like _I love you._

“See, you’ve been missing out,” Violet grins. “Honestly, hotel sleepovers are way better now, Katya’s no fun at all.”

It’s Katya’s turn to curse her out and then they’re laughing again and it’s really not all that funny but it’s late and they’re literally on top of their game, and together, and Katya can’t stop until his cheeks hurt. They’re just settling into another moment of comfortable silence when Trixie sits up a bit straighter and then says,

“I should move my quad flip to the second half tomorrow, or change it to a combination or something.” He’s quiet and tentative and trades looking at either one of them for staring down at his hands, at where one hand is nervously gripping the index finger of the other for dear life.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” Katya asks, almost simultaneous with Violet’s,

“Why, your choreo’s _great—_ ”

“More points,” Trixie says simply. “And I need them, so... “

“Okay, no,” Violet begins, uncharacteristically careful as she looks up to catch his eyes. “Your routine was choreographed the way it is ‘cause it works _,_ and it’s good, Trixie, it’s so good. You don’t need to make it more dangerous ‘cause it _might_ give you an extra point. If it doesn’t, it’d just throw you off and— you don’t need that. Don’t be stupid, just… do your choreo and be good.”

In the beat that follows, Trixie laughs uneasily, and then glances away from her.

“You really feel that strongly about it, huh,” he says, only halfway to his usual critical deadpan.

“I do ‘cause I’ve _tried_ it, and it fucked me up,” Violet shrugs as she stands up. Katya can’t help thinking about Nationals, two years ago, when Violet had changed her routine last minute only to confuse herself with the unfamiliar sequence, and fuck up like he’d never seen her fuck up before. She’d lost a medal then, and Katya had pretended to not notice her cry on the minivan ride back to the hotel, but had held her hand anyway.

“Right,” Trixie manages, and if the way his cheeks have flushed is any indication, he remembers now too.

“I’m just saying, you’re _great_ without last minute stunts. You’ll be fine,” Violet explains, softening a little. She leans down and presses a kiss to Trixie’s forehead, which he accepts without question.

“I should go, it’s late.” 

Katya wants to argue with that, wants another half hour of this, but she’s already heading for the door and he can tell she wants to leave, so he doesn’t push it.

“Right, beauty sleep is important,” he says, shooting a grin at her. “I mean, I don’t know if just one night of it will do you any good but…”

Violet laughs at that and whatever tension had built in the air between them dissipates.

“You kids have fun,” she says and then, when they’re done saying goodnights, slips out.

Trixie only waits until the door clicks shut and then asks,  
  
“She’s not really upset with me, is she?”

“No, she’s not,” Katya promises, finally moving to join him in Violet’s old spot on the bed. “She just doesn’t want you to do anything stupid ‘cause she secretly wants you to do well.”

Trixie exhales a laugh and relaxes a little, nodding thoughtfully to himself.

“And she’s right, for the record,” Katya carries on, suddenly animated. “If you _do_ do anything dumb I swear to god I’ll kill you with my own bare hands in front of the entire technical panel.”

“Understood.”

Trixie falls silent for another moment and then sighs deeply as he throws himself to lie down on his back.

“I just really fucking— don’t wanna be _fourth_ , you know,” he explains, all candor and frustration.

For half a ridiculous second, Katya contemplates joining him, lying down next to him to look at specks of paint on the ceiling and pretend they’re stars, talking him gently out of his fear and self doubt. And he could, no one would stop him, but there’s an anxiety that slithers down from his throat and settles below his ribs at the thought, and he _can’t._

“Who the fuck knows, maybe someone steps their pussy up and you end up fifth,” he says instead, mock serious. Trixie laughs loudly and blindly swats at his leg without really moving from his spot.

“You’re a monster,” he announces, shaking his head. “I turned to you for support and this is what I get?!”

“Brutal honesty is my best trait.”

“It’s sweet that you think you have any redeemable traits,” Trixie notes, and then rolls over to his stomach, stretching his arms over his head. His shoulder pops and it makes him snicker, and Katya can’t believe how blissfully unaware and casual he is, and how _close,_ absolutely within reach if he dared.

There’s a noise that he almost, _almost_ makes at the thought and he only holds it back when it’s half out of his mouth already, masks it with a long yawn.

“Shit, do you wanna go to bed?” Trixie asks, automatic, and he’s on his feet before Katya can say no. “Vi’s right, it’s late, I should really let you rest.”

Katya watches him kind of helplessly as he walks towards the door. He really doesn’t have any good arguments to make this last any longer.

“Beauty sleep, am I right,” he offers, and fake yawns again for good measure.  

“Not for you it isn’t,” Trixie shrugs.

“That’s my fucking joke you whore.”

“Get some sleep, maybe you’ll come up with a new one by tomorrow,” Trixie shoots back, but then he gives Katya a smile that’s a little softer as he opens the door. “Night, K.”

All Katya can do is smile back.

“Yeah, try to _actually_ get some rest,” he says, and then he also says goodnight, and then Trixie’s out of his room and he’s groaning, long and overwhelmed and embarrassing.

His timing is entirely, tragically off. Katya has very few hours to sleep before breakfast and practice ice and the fucking event and he’s wide awake and hyperfixated on the image of Trixie lounging around in his bed like a fucking teenager who’s never been as much as kissed. He’s about ten years too old for any of this.

There’s a part of his mind, an irrational, horrible, devious part that wonders what would have happened if he’d dared come closer, and maybe touch, or deliver another speech about Trixie’s talent halfway to a Jane Austen-esque admission of whatever feelings he has.

That part of his mind — even in its wildest, ideal iteration where Trixie cares and responds with something in the same vein, where it goes somewhere right in Katya’s dimly lit hotel room — has little regard for how impractical that would be, for both of them, how exhausted and distracted they’d be the following morning. That part of Katya just wants to know what could have happened, and he just wants it to shut up.

 

> **To Violet** **  
> ** (12:07:02am)  
>  Please tell me you’re not actually asleep.

Katya’s sure he’ll regret reaching out to her in the morning, when he’s clear headed and focused on the competition but now, he just needs her to be the voice of reason that either solves all of this for him or at least tells him to stop being a child and go to sleep. For a moment he thinks she might really be sleeping but then the gray text under his message goes from _Delivered_ to _Read (12:08am),_ and then she’s typing.

 

> **To Katya** ****  
> (12:08:42am)  
>  ?
> 
> **To Violet  
> ** (12:08:49am)  
>  I’m gay.
> 
> **To Katya** ****  
> (12:08:54am)  
>  yeah no shit
> 
> **To Violet** **  
> ** (12:09:01am)  
>  I’m gay and fucking freaking out this is a bad time to be gay.

Katya watches the three dots that indicate Violet’s typing pop up and disappear a few times, and just as he starts to type a hopefully slightly more elaborate explanation so she actually knows what’s going on, there’s a knock on his door.

When he walks over and opens it, Violet’s standing in the hallway, arms crossed but still carrying her phone. She’s scrubbed her face clean and it’s glossy with whatever bedtime baby unicorn blood cream keeps her looking like a youthful porcelain doll. Without the arched brows and the rest of her everyday makeup wizardry, she’s boyish and softer, more so than Katya ever gets to see, even in practice, and something about all of it makes him smile a little at her. He’s interrupting her private time with herself, that much is clear, so the least he can do is try to show a little thankfulness.

“What’s going on, what happened?” Violet asks softly.

Katya takes a breath and stops short before he can answer. _Trixie was in my bed and I’m having a meltdown about it, also I’m a fully grown adult_ seems unreasonable, so he settles on,

“Nothing, I just…” he sighs and rubs his temple. Violet, to her credit, just watches him quietly and lets him work through it. “This is a very bad time.”

“Yeah,” Violet agrees, and it surprises him. Despite his vehement denial at first, she’s been the only person who mostly knows what he’s dealing with, and the single voice trying to force him to do _something_ about it, but now she’s reaching to rub his arm, just above the wrist, as she says,

“Wait until we’re home, at least. Too much is happening right now to… look, babe, I know this is serious for you and as much as I wanna see you two ride off into the sunset, now _is_ a really bad time. Just— “

“No, I know, I get it,” Katya interrupts, defeated. “I’m not trying to have some huge moment, I just… wish I could handle this like a fucking normal person, you know. For myself. I don’t wanna talk to him.”

Violet exhales a low laugh.

“I know you don’t,” she agrees. “Listen, all I can say is just take your time, right? I’m sorry— that’s not super helpful.”

“No, no, it is,” Katya assures her, and actually smiles back at her this time. “I was just freaking out, can you please live down the hall from me all the time?”

Violet laughs again and then steps in to give him a quick hug.

“You’ll be fine, K, just go to bed,” she promises.

“Can’t.”

“Okay, well, _I_ want to,” Violet insists, and then blows a kiss at him as she starts to walk back towards her room. “Jerk off or something, I don’t know.”

“I hate you,” Katya calls after her and she just shakes her head, unlocks her room and disappears through the door.

 

Katya feels a little less electric when he walks back into his room. The anxiety is still there, crawling under his skin, undefinable and annoyingly incessant but he’s at peace with letting it settle there and live with it for the night. He gets ready for bed and then texts Violet a quick thank you to let her know he’ll live as he flips the lights off. She doesn’t respond, so at least one of them is asleep, and if Katya could bring himself to be at least a little mad at her, he’d probably be jealous.

In the dark, Katya goes through his free skate program move by move, counting spins and jumps as though they’re sheep, and then lets his mind wander off to the lyrics of songs he’s had memorized for years, jumbled Russian and English words chasing each other around in his head. He meditates, almost, some bastardized version of it where he just lies on his back with his arms crossed at his chest and breathes like he would in yoga, and frustratingly, it gets him nowhere near closer to sleep.

Some time passes and he knows it must only be minutes but it feels longer. Katya’s eyes have started to adjust to the darkness, there’s shadows in the corners where there’d only been black and the static of the room, its silence, is somehow louder now. He can hear footsteps somewhere down the hallway, maybe cars seven floors below, the sounds a building makes when it’s settling down for the night. If only there was a ghost story to terrify him and be what’s keeping him awake.

There is, instead, his hand at his bare clavicle, tracing the dip above the bone mindlessly, of its own volition. Katya sighs at it and then resolves to let it go on, lets his other other hand drift down his chest, featherlight and mostly directionless. It occurs to him that Violet was right, as usual, and then he chases her name from his thoughts. He doesn’t need his friend on his mind as his fingertips slide past the waistband of his briefs. Instead, Katya tries to think of absolutely nothing.

He listens for the rustle in the sheets when he bends one knee and pulls his foot up, for the intake of breath when he wraps his fingers around himself and strokes, just once. He’s not hard by a long shot, and his hand is too cold, but the unease that rests in his chest shifts regardless, spreads thick as honey across his body and he’s alight with it, has to work through it now.

The hand at his collarbone travels down, ghosts over his nipple, and then back up, until he lets it rest at the juncture of his shoulder and neck, pressing there just hard enough to ground him. It’s easy to imagine the thumb at the column of his neck as someone else’s; imagine it move to the underside of his chin to guide his lips into a kiss and he succumbs to it, falls into the thought of a nondescript mouth on his as his dick grows harder in his grip.

The fantasy fades when Katya tightens his hold, rolling his hips just a little to match its slow, drawn out rhythm. He breathes in and out with each stroke in shallow, sharp breaths until his palm is slick enough with precum and he speeds up. It’s too rough and not at all ideal but it’s enough for this, for the faceless hands he pictures at his thighs and the ghost breath at his neck.

With his face buried in the crook of his elbow, forcing him into complete darkness, Katya drifts with the thought of someone’s hand replacing his, of a hot mouth swallowing down his cock, and he works with it as he moves faster, conjuring image after image of someone else’s heat until his balls tighten and he’s arching off to fuck into his fist.

When he comes, his mind goes mercifully blank and then he drops, heavy and drained, against the sweat-sticky sheets. His ears are ringing and it’s cold now, and he should move and clean up but he rolls to his side instead, curls up there to let the aftershocks die down.

 

Katya falls into a dreamless, uncomfortable sleep that seems to only last a minute, and wakes up feeling gross but surprisingly rested enough before sunrise. He showers and sneaks off to breakfast with a pang of guilt as he leaves the _Please clean up this room_ sign hanging on his door.

There’s no one at breakfast, and then no one at the rink when he gets there, hours ahead of schedule. Katya drops a text to Michelle to let her know not to look for him at the hotel and then hits the ice, headphones in, to take advantage of the early morning for some extra work. The music in his ears is quiet enough that he can still hear each scrape of his blades against the ice, the way it echoes through the empty rink. It feels a lot like practice at home and for a moment, it’s easy to forget that the arena will be full and the empty row of desks he’s facing will hold a group of people who get to decide his fate in just a few hours.

Being alone on the ice, with no one watching and nothing at stake, is enough to take Katya’s mind off the leftover unease from the night; the odd, inexplicable sense of vague shame that’s taken root in his gut.

He manages to refocus and seems to have moved past it until the rest of the skaters show up for the scheduled practice time and Trixie skates over to him, bright-eyed and beaming as he greets,

“Hey, missed you at breakfast, did you sleep alright?”

Katya can’t help beaming right back at him, despite the unease that reemerges and weighs him down as soon as he’s reminded of his night.

“Yeah, just fine,” he lies, and then he’s grateful that there’s a competition he can focus on so there’s no time to worry about anything else anymore.

  


After that, there’s no time for any more personal crises. Michelle is ruthless during practice and delivers an incessant, detailed stream of feedback for each one of her competitors that flows through all of their activities until it’s time for them to go to the locker room and get changed.

The room quiets down when the first group of skaters heads out for their warm up, leaving only the three of them and the remaining two people in their group behind. There is, technically, the option to sneak out and watch everyone else’s programs — on the screens in the hallway, or hidden in the walkway to the rink, but Trixie’s face is a greenish shade of white when he says,

“I don’t think I want to watch them,” voice tight and catching in his throat, so that decides it for the three of them and they all stay back, in silent camaraderie, until a nervous looking PA in a puff jacket walks in to let them know they’re about to be called for warm up.

“Okay, let’s go,” Violet says, and Katya watches her face actually shift from perfectly poised indifference to that look of savage, ruthless determination she gets when she’s competing as they head down to enter the rink.

Trixie turns back in the moment before he steps onto the ice, eyes darting between Katya and Violet as he grins despite his nerves and goes,

“Kill it, have fun.”

Katya just grins back and gives him a quick thumbs up as a camera person tracks their entrance onto the ice. He wonders briefly if their chat would be televised and then he skates to the center of the rink, flashing the audience in the stalls his brightest smile as the announcer calls his name.

He skates through most of the warm up as expected, until he catches Trixie out of the corner of his eye right as he’s completing the combination he’d sworn he wouldn’t do. He lands it just fine, and the audience cheers at that, and Katya’s head is spinning.

Under the pretence of pulling off his hoodie, he skates to the wall and then reroutes, catches up to Trixie as casually as he can.

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” he says, as quickly and privately as possible with several cameras and hundreds of eyes on him.

Trixie nods and doesn’t say anything.

“Please. Don’t hurt yourself,” Katya insists. It must only take a second but it feels much, much longer to him when Trixie catches his eyes and nods again, and this time it feels as if he wants to assure Katya that he’s listening, that he knows.

The announcer gives the one minute remaining check, and time speeds up again as Katya says,

“Good, okay,” and then skates off to finish warming up.

There’s only one skater before Trixie — a young boy from a former USSR country who’d greeted Katya in the locker room and shyly said good luck in Russian, and he skates a perfectly respectable program to what Katya can only define as a Borodin megamix with selections from Prince Igor that he’s probably too young to really understand.

It distracts Katya for a few minutes but then his stomach twists anxiously again as soon as Trixie hit the ice. He’s clad in goldish yellow today, embellished with baby pink and fuchsia embroidery. The bloused sleeves and the deep V cutout at his chest stand in contrast in another shade of deep pink, and he looks like a wintertime sun in a cold, bleak sky against the white of the ice.

Katya watches with his breath caught, almost deaf to the response of the crowd, as Trixie skates the program as close to perfection as it’s ever been in practice, one jumping pass, and then the other, and then Katya’s exhaling long and shaky and relieved when he doesn’t try any of the changes he’d contemplated. He never needed them, anyway.

Trixie’s score puts him in the lead and Katya’s smiling as the announcer moves on from reading the points out to calling his own name.

He’s back where he’d been yesterday, with his heart bursting with pride for Trixie and his mind reminding him to focus on himself as he skates to his starting position and takes a breath to center himself. There’s a moment of complete stillness, in which the crowd seems to blur into nothing, and Katya gets to listen to his heartbeat and nothing, absolutely nothing else.

Then, his music starts, a sudden jolt of high energy electric guitar, and he’s skating.

This is his fun routine, the one where he gets to show the judges’ panel that he’s capable of being more than lyrical, that there’s nothing more punk rock than a flawlessly executed triple axel triple toe loop combination in the first thirty seconds of a program.

Like swimming back up above water, Katya draws in a breath as he flies through the end of the combination and into his choreo sequence. He can hear the crowd now, and he knows they’re on his side, can hear them scream as he hydroblades to match the screech of the guitar.

He wonders fleetingly if Trixie’s watching, now that he’s done his part, if he’s seeing Katya  _kill it_ just as he’d wished him, and the sheer thought that he _must_ be propels Katya forward through the rest of the program, sends him off on some incredible high of adrenaline and pride and what would feel an awful lot like desire if he could pause to define it.

His hand touches the ice once, at the end of a jump that shouldn’t matter, and then he’s spinning and spinning until everything halts when the music grows to its last explosive beat and he’s done, one fist in the air in his best iteration of a Freddie Mercury power stance.

Katya holds there for a moment, and then remembers to breathe, and then remembers he gets to say _Fuck yeah_ at no one at particular and celebrate himself as he nods a quick bow at the audience and skates off to accept a Hello Kitty plushie that someone’s offering him from the front row.

Michelle is waiting for him at the exit and she’s squeezing his shoulders before he can get his skate guards on.

“Good job,” she praises, and then laughs when Katya steps in to give her a hug. “Great job. Come on.”

They walk to the kiss and cry and Katya only realizes his head is spinning when he sits, when he gets a moment to wind down.

“Do you think—” he starts, turning to face Michelle. “More than Trixie?”

“Probably,” she says, and Katya lets out a long exhale. His mind is racing with math he couldn’t do on a good day, let alone now. There’s two people left to skate — Kim, the Korean skater, and Violet, and Katya has the lead from the previous day but if Violet skates better than whatever he scores, she’d easily take over, and if the other skater does something incredible everything could change, or if Violet fucks up, it could be something else entirely. It could be gold or nothing for Katya, and practically the same for the rest of them, and he’s struggling to take a proper breath again as he thinks it through.

“Katya,” says Michelle, and she reaches to grip his hand. The worn leather of her red glove is a comfort that grounds him almost immediately. “Calm down. You did _fantastic,_ just hope that—“

Whatever she’s about to say gets cut off by the announcer calling for _the scores, please,_ and they turn to watch the screen across from the kiss and cry bench as it displays his scores and the “SB” that signifies _season’s best._

“Holy shit,” Katya whispers as Michelle gives him a one-armed side hug while the announcer clarifies that this score puts him _currently, in first place._ Katya puppeteers Hello Kitty plushie to wave at the camera and then grins again, and tries to remember everything about seeing his name at the top of the current standings list, right above Trixie’s.

He reminds himself that all of this is temporary as he heads back to the walkway where he hides to watch the rest of the programs. Trixie is there, too, and he hugs Katya wordlessly as soon as he’s within reach.

“This was hot, you fucking murdered it,” Trixie says, and then, quickly, “I’m so scared.”

“Yeah, I know,” Katya agrees, frowning as his mind immediately goes back to all of the math.

He watches Kim on the ice distractedly as he tries to calculate scores, until Trixie winces next to him, drawing in air sharply through his teeth. 

“That was a double,” he says, just barely audible.

“Huh?”  
  
“He downgraded, that’s a deduction, it was a double,” Trixie repeats, and Katya can tell he’s barely keeping his voice calm as Katya and his math catch up. If Trixie is right, it would be impossible for him to score higher than either of them.

The wait for his scores feels almost longer than that for Katya’s own. When it comes, Trixie turns out right — the deduction places him a few points below Trixie and Katya can’t help but laugh, in something near relief.

“Don’t— not yet,” Trixie says quietly. “Watch her.”

Katya nods; he’s right. He has no doubt in his mind that as Violet hits the ice, she’s going for gold, for the first place he’s still holding, but there’s no guarantee that she will not trip up on something that’s never tripped her up before, that she won’t make a mistake no one could have seen coming.

All of his math is useless now — it’s all down to Violet, and the masterclass in burlesque seduction she puts on in her program. She dripping in turquoise stones and undeniable as she flashes the audience a sultry blood red half-smile and slides into her first spiral. Violet skates without a single mistake that Katya can see, though he’s sure that later, when they congregate in her hotel room, she’ll point out ten things he missed and she could do better. For now, though, she’s incredible, and all Katya can feel is a surge of pride as he joins the audience that cheers for her in the end.

He stands close to Trixie and neither of them speaks as they wait for Violet’s scores. It’s down to fractions of points and math that Katya’s racing mind can’t keep up with but when the announcer calls for Violet’s scores, he gets to do something else, something better.

He turns, and watches Trixie hear the scores. It takes a second, and then it sinks, and Trixie’s anxious face cracks into the most wonderful, bewildered smile Katya’s ever seen. Violet’s result puts her ahead of Katya and leaves Trixie with the bronze but it’s the three of them at the top, the podium Michelle had worked for since late June; it’s Trixie’s first senior grand prix medal and he’s just _laughing_ about it.

“Fuck,” he manages, and then turns to Katya, wide eyed and flushed. “Fuck. It _happened_.”

He’s shaking when Katya pulls him in for a hug. Perhaps later, after the ceremony and after they celebrate, Katya will find it in himself to be a little mad that Violet surpassed him. Maybe he’ll find it in himself to nitpick his mistakes and be more of a competitor than a friend but now, right now, Trixie’s arms are around him and he’s whispering,

“I’m so proud of you, we did it, I’m _so proud_ ,” somewhere in the vicinity of Katya’s hair, and he can’t bring himself to feel anything but lucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as usual to M who finds my typos and gets my obscure skating references.   
>  find me on tumblr while it still exist, the real grand prix final is this weekend and i'll be screaming there.


	4. hiroshima

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> mind the tags! this chapter includes streams of consciousness that very much read as an anxiety attack.

On the second of their two days off after Canada, Katya shows up outside Trixie’s apartment in the early afternoon, while the sun is still high up in the sky even though the days have started getting so much shorter. It’s a wonderfully crisp day, cold but bright in that early winter way that could get you daydreaming about a white Christmas way before the reality of dirty snow, too many layers of sweaters, and being ready to sleep at 6pm sets in.

Trixie has no idea that Katya’s coming over — he hasn’t texted or called, or done whatever people are expected to do nowadays before incessantly ringing someone’s doorbell. He’s just about to ring a third time when Trixie swings the door open and stares him down as if he’s the world’s most unwanted cult missionary turned door-to-door tupperware salesperson. He’s wearing loose sweatpants and worn flannel with just a few hastily buttoned up buttons, and is blinking at Katya like he’d been napping about twenty seconds ago.

“Surprise!” Katya says, spreading his arms in a little _ta-dah_ gesture for good measure. As much as Trixie might seem like he’d love to keep glaring at him, his look softens and he returns through a laugh,

“I see you every day! Why are you— did you just come home from the _war?!_ ”

“Oh no, the war’s still going on,” Katya sighs, doing his best approximation of the haunted, far away look of a soldier in a straight-to-cable film about the horrors of some unnamed war.

“That’s— you’re horrible,” Trixie scolds but he’s stepping aside to let him in at the same time. “Why are you here?”

Katya takes a breath. This whole surprise fun day out thing had seemed much easier when he’d rehearsed it in his head, and subsequently talked it over with Violet on the phone. To her credit, Violet had been really helpful and patient, and has only texted him _good luck with ur date!_ once this morning, to which Katya replied with a close up selfie with his middle finger obscuring half his face.

_Not a date._

“Um,” he starts. Trixie gives him an expectant look while he moves a worn-looking fleece blanket and a gaming controller from the couch to make room for Katya. “Go get dressed, we’re going out.”

This too had sounded way less creepy and demanding in rehearsal but Trixie lets out a little surprised laugh and doesn’t seem concerned with Katya’s possible kidnapping plot, which makes things a little easier.

“Oh, um— okay?” he says, looking almost self-consciously down at his flannel. “Where are we going? Also, you know you can _call_ to make plans, right?”

“I didn’t wanna give you a chance to reason your way out of this,” Katya explains, because it’s the truth. He’s not even remotely trying to be funny and yet Trixie chuckles at that, too. “What? It’s your day off, I figured you’d rather—”

He motions vaguely at Trixie’s gaming setup but Trixie’s already heading towards his bedroom as he calls,

“No, I did that all day yesterday, it was getting boring already. There’s tea and coffee in the kitchen, help yourself.”

 _Coffee_ might be giving Trixie’s collection of ridiculously flavored no sugar K-cups a bit too much credit but Katya does make himself what claims to be a hazelnut latte in a baby pink mug with a chip near the handle. It looks like there might have been a decal of Dolly Parton’s face at some point but Trixie is clearly the kind of person who puts mugs in the dishwasher, so she’s faded and reduced to the vague outline of eyes, lips, piles of blonde hair by now. Katya takes a sip of the latte, which is watery but acceptable, and examines the mug some more.

On the other side, there used to be text, and Katya’s heart actually does a delighted little flip as he recognizes the word _ambition_ in chunky, Pinterest-worthy cursive. He steps back into the living room, and calls in the general direction of Trixie’s bedroom,

“Please tell me this mug says _poured myself a cup of ambition,_ please!”

Trixie reemerges almost immediately. He’s changed into his one pair of nice but worn jeans, and is wearing a dark cable-knit sweater over another plaid button-up. Katya would probably make fun of his flannel problem, too, if he wasn’t too fixated on the whole mug thing. He takes another sip, and holds it up so Trixie can be absolutely sure what he’s referring to.

Trixie flushes and rolls his eyes as he shakes his head a little, in what could almost be construed as embarrassment.

“Secret Santa gift from Violet, like— two years ago?” he explains, and when Katya gives him an incredulous look, adds, “...I might’ve hinted that I wanted it. I thought it was fun.”

Katya drops his voice to a grave monotone, his best impression of a detective in interrogation.

“Do you drink from this in the morning, Trace? When you need some _ambition_? Do you?”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Trixie shrieks, face turning a brighter shade of pink than the mug. “You don’t get to come into my house and question my self-motivation methods!”

“Not questioning it, I think it’s adorable,” Katya shrugs, and he means it, but Trixie just swears at him so Katya blessedly doesn’t need to explain himself.

“So, where are we going?” Trixie asks, once he’s told Katya to just drink his fucking coffee, and Katya’s agreed to let the whole cheesy Dolly lyrics thing go, at least for now.

“Oh, okay, forgot to tell you,” he says, and then pauses for a second. Once again, this had seemed way easier in practice. “Go pack up your boots, too.”

“ _Katya—_ ” Trixie starts, his shoulders dropping a little.

“They’ve opened that new rink in the park and it’s cold enough to actually go there, plus I hear there’s a DJ _and_ mulled wine,” Katya presses, all in one breath, because he did rehearse that part, too.

“You don’t drink,” Trixie points out and Katya laughs, raising his arms in a vague _whatever_ gesture.

“Sure, but it adds to the whole atmosphere, you know? The whole—” he waves his hands, searching for the right words. “Like, winter market aesthetic?”

Trixie bites his lip and looks up to study his face from where he’s perched on the armrest of the couch.

“You really wanna go _skating_ on your last day off?”

Katya nods emphatically.

“I really do.”

Trixie sighs and gives him a look that Katya couldn’t, in a billion years, begin to unpack, but it’s accompanied with a little smile before he exhales — _okay, fine —_ and disappears into his room again.

They’re out of his apartment soon after, and they fill the short walk to the nearby park with aimless chatter, catching up as though they haven’t only spent a day away from each other and the rink. Trixie tries to question Katya’s sudden love for open skate a few more times, until Katya threatens to share his mug collection on Instagram, and Trixie declares him _the worst friend I’ve ever had_ and follows him into the park pouting petulantly.

The small winter wonderland setup at the heart of the park is corny at best, but in that tacky _Christmas Coca-Cola commercial_ way that somehow still manages to be charming. The small, busy rink is surrounded by wooden huts promising everything from mulled wine through handmade Christmas ornaments, all the way to waffles that fill the air with the scent of crisp dough and melted chocolate.

“It’s _too_ early for this,” Trixie observes as they take in the market. “I mean, it’s before _Thanksgiving—_ “

“It’s never too early for the joys of non-denominational holidays and rampant consumerism,” Katya declares as he guides them towards the hut that reads, in candy cane red and white letters, ICE RINK TICKETS. Trixie snickers and gives him an exasperated look as he steps past Katya and pulls his wallet out, saying,

  
“Let me get this.”

Katya opens his mouth to protest but Trixie demands that if Katya’s clearly planned all of this, he ought to do _something,_ so Katya relents and lets him pay their entrance fee. They find an unoccupied bench and sit there to change into their skates in companionable silence, until Trixie points out quietly,

“You know we could’ve just gone to the rink if you wanted to skate, right? It’s free _and_ the ice is better, and—”

“Yeah, but would we get this?” Katya reasons, motioning for him to look up. It’s darker now, and the rest of the colorful lights that decorate the huts are flickering on, filling the small square with warm, pulsating light.

To his surprise, Trixie doesn’t really argue with that. He watches the lights for a moment, and then smiles as he gets up and pulls his skate guards off.

“No, guess not.”  
  
“I know what I’m about, Mattel,” Katya nods and grins proudly as he follows Trixie onto the ice.

They skate a lazy circle near the wall to discover that the ice is, as Trixie had predicted, scratched up and bumpier than anyone who cares about their blades would prefer but probably not all that bad, overall.

“This what you wanted?” Trixie asks as Katya turns to face him, skating backwards in leisurely crossovers. He smiles, and Trixie beams back at him.

“Kinda, yeah,” Katya admits, stretching one hand towards Trixie, like an invitation to dance. It’s nothing they haven’t done before, at their own rink, the silly faux-pairs messing around when Michelle isn’t looking and warmups get out of control but this — with a terrible mash-up of Little Drummer Boy and Ariana Grande blasting in the background — somehow feels different.

“K, I’m not trying to—” Trixie begins, glancing around almost shyly. “I don’t wanna show off, I’m not doing that.”

“Alright, we won’t,” Katya promises, because he can only stand to push his luck so far, and it’s enough to get Trixie to put his hand in Katya’s. “Just follow me.”

Trixie huffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes a little, and Katya gets the feeling that he might be aware of just how silly and borderline cheesy this whole thing is starting to feel. He doesn’t say anything, though, and he allows Katya to drag him into a series of simple, synchronized crossovers and half turns. It’s all in Katya’s head, he decides, and in the twisted up pit of his stomach — Trixie has no idea, most likely, that he’s definitely overthinking the way he has Trixie’s pink gloved hand in his, or that he’s worrying about what it might _mean,_ or anything else of the sort.

To Trixie, who seems to loosen up slightly when he realizes no one’s really paying attention to them, it must just be the same stupid stuff they’ve done on the ice countless times, and nothing else, and like he’d angrily reminded Violet over text,

_Not a date._

“Katya,” Trixie calls, and it pulls him out of his thoughts and back onto the rink. The flickering lights and the pop tune blasting behind them come into full focus again, and he looks up to find Trixie grinning at him, a pink flush spreading over his nose and across his cheeks.

“Welcome back,” he says, and Katya realizes he must have really looked distracted. “You okay?”

“Yeah, just— thinking about Japan,” he lies smoothly, because being worried about an upcoming competition is way more reasonable than being worried about the implications of casual skating with a good friend.

“No, come on. Day off, remember?” Trixie reminds him, and lets go of his hand to skate towards the center of the rink, motioning at Katya with a little _come!_ gesture. Katya follows.

Trixie is still smiling as he skates a circle around him and then does a simple, albeit technically perfect, scratch spin. It’s almost jarring to see him spin without any flairs, without anything that would get his difficulty and grade of execution points up.

“I thought you didn’t wanna show off!” Katya calls, anyway, just to get on his nerves.

“That’s not showing off,” Trixie points out, circling Katya again, this time accompanied by an effortless waltz jump.

“Kinda is, though,” Katya argues and reaches out to grip his forearm, which almost throws Trixie off balance and makes him yelp as he slings his free arm out to remain upright as he slides closer into Katya’s pull.

“God, you’re a dick,” Trixie breathes out as he comes crashing into Katya’s chest, though he’s laughing when Katya steers them in the opposite direction and manages to spare them the fall. Katya attributes the fact that his head’s spinning to his very questionable footwork, and just returns Trixie’s brilliant grin with another shrug.

“Maybe you _should_ show off a little, then” he challenges, and finally lets Trixie’s arm go, before the moment can drag out into the uncomfortable. “Show us what that’d look like.”

“Maybe you should’ve brought Violet if you wanted a show pony,” Trixie shoots back, but then he slides a couple feet back to give Katya room and adds with an almost smirk, “Fine. I will if you will.”

Katya glances around the rink. There’s a few fearless children dashing around all reckless abandon and no technique at all, teenagers and college students who skate confident laps near the wall but not much else, a few couples that are very much on clearly defined dates and adorable as they skate hand in hand, an older man cutting up the ice as he flies around with his hands in his pockets as if he were the star of some rink twenty years ago. It’s a far cry from a technical panel, and he’s sure it wouldn’t take much to impress any of them, but Trixie’s still giving him that pretend serious look and maybe he does have to impress, just a little.

“Ugh, alright,” Katya says, like it really took that much convincing, and then he does an inside three turn around Trixie, and pulls it into a layback spin. He’s really not dressed for this but Trixie’s laughing and calls out some variation on an _Oh, alright, work_ encouragement, so Katya reaches back and pulls his leg up past the haircutter and into his Biellmann. It would definitely look better if he were warmed up properly and all, but it’s more than sufficient for where they are.

Off to the side, somewhere, one of the children shrieks “Oh my god, look!”, and Katya dissolves into laughter as he brings his foot back down and finishes the spin.

“Fucking show-off,” Trixie groans.

“Thought that was the _point,_ ” Katya reminds him. “So how are you gonna top that?”

“Very bold of you to assume I’d ever wanna top anything, honey,” Trixie fires, and Katya gasps, mock-scandalized as he slides his hands under his hat and thinks to himself that now would be as good a time as any for the ice to split open and perhaps swallow him whole.

“Shut up and show me some stunts,” he says instead, and only regrets flipping Trixie off when he realizes the children are still staring.

“You’re a horrible influence,” Trixie announces, and then he’s still muttering about how Katya is corrupting the youths as he takes off into a double flip double toe that would be an embarrassment at practice but makes him look like an absolute ice god in this particular situation.

One of the kids who have been watching the whole exchange skids to a stop near Katya, arms windmilling around as he tries to regain his balance. Katya might not exactly be good with children, not by a long shot, but he’s been around enough novices in his lifetime to reach out and hold him steady by the elbow, purely on instinct. 

“Thanks,” the kid says, tilting his freckled, red face up to smile widely at Katya. “You and your boyfriend are good, you should be in the Olympics or whatever.”

Being caught off guard by a middle schooler is probably on the list of top ten most ridiculous things that have happened to Katya lately. He doesn’t know where to begin with the corrections: _he’s not my boyfriend, the most recent Olympics were this year, I_ was _there and I have the silver to prove it_ — or whether it’s inappropriate to give your life story to a strange preteen at all, so he settles for nodding as he pats his shoulder.

“Yeah, you know what, you’re right,” Katya agrees, and the kid nods, as if to say _duh, of course I am_.

“Good luck with that,” he grins, and he’s already skating off when he adds, “I’m Micah, by the way.”

“Bye, Micah,” Katya laughs and turns to meet Trixie’s eyes as he skates back over to him.

“Making friends, huh?” Trixie teases.

“He’s a fan, said you should be in the Olympics,” Katya explains and then, because he’s always been painfully incapable of keeping his fucking mouth shut, “Thought you were my boyfriend, too.”

Trixie tilts his head to the side and falls silent for a split second in which Katya manages to reconsider every single life choice that has led him to that moment. His expression is unreadable, just briefly, but then he’s shrugging it off lightly, unaffected,

“Well, he’s right about one of those things.”

Katya exhales, then clears his throat.

“You wish,” he manages, “You’ll win the lottery long before you get me _or_ the Olympics, bitch.”

That gets Trixie to roll his eyes and laugh loudly, and it’s as if things never got quiet between them at all.

“Come on,” he says, and then he’s taking Katya’s hand to drag him around in another casual lap.

Despite himself, Katya feels the anxiety that was beginning to settle in his chest dissipate as he allows Trixie to reach back and grab both of his hands, pulling ahead of him until they’re zooming around the edge of the rink, unreasonably fast. It’s easy like this, and fun, and right now, it doesn’t need to be anything else.

A voice over the speakers announces the end of the session and Trixie spins around to face him as they head off the ice.

“Thanks for bringing me,” he offers, just a little out of breath, and completely flushed now. “You were right, this was fun.”

Katya pauses at the side of the door and takes the time while he’s sliding his skate guards on to look up, smile back, and store away the way Trixie’s laugher lines look in the soft glow of the string lights around them.

“Offended you’d think I’d make you do anything that’s not fun,” he says finally, and follows Trixie off to change out of their skates.

“I’m being nice, just take it,” Trixie insists, and it makes Katya groan. “Seriously, we should do this again sometime.”

This is perfect, Katya thinks fleetingly — even with the out of tune rendition of White Christmas over the speakers, or the fact that they’re not allowed to follow the session with hot chocolate, or that now that they’re on solid ground, he has no excuse to hold Trixie’s hand — it’s perfect, for now. It’s enough.

“Yeah, of course,” he promises. “We will.”

Any plan to do anything outside of training gets immediately tucked away for some other time in the distant future early the next morning. Katya’s just a few hours into his off ice workout when the details of the previous day start to blur like a nice dream that you can’t hold on to when you awake. By the time Michelle’s yelling at him over the blaring sound of his short program music, the whole winter wonderland escape with Trixie seems like it could have been an entire lifetime ago, in some other universe, the Narnia fairytale on the other side of his locker.

Now that they’re training for different events, their schedules don’t match as well anymore and all of his communication with Trixie and Violet happens in the very rare moments the three of them happen to share the ice, and mostly — over text.

With less than a week to go before Katya flies out to Japan, he returns from his morning run to way too many unread texts in their group chat. All of them boil down to Trixie and Violet having woken up to watch the end of the Helsinki event and provide explicit commentary on, judging from Katya’s 362 unread texts, every single spin, jump and rhinestone in Finland.

The fact that they have both foregone their slightly more lax (9 am instead of eight) morning training times and sacrificed sleep for an event they could have very well watched later is borderline a personal attack on Katya’s sanity and pre-competition schedule, and he lets them know as much after he’s done absently scrolling through an entirely offensive amount of unintelligible texts and emoji.  

 

> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Katya  
> ** **  
> **(07:35:17)  
>  I can’t believe you chose this over an extra hr of sleep.
> 
>   
>  (07:35:32)  
>  Not reading all of it, what did I miss?  
>    
>    
>  **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Violet  
> **   
>  (07:35:40)  
>  USA USA USA
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Trixie  
> **   
>  (07:35:42)  
>  morning K
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Violet  
> **   
>  (07:35:50)  
>  BEN! GOLD

Violet then sends a picture of her laptop screen showing the final results after the free skate, featuring an outrageously picturesque bowl of strawberry-topped oatmeal in the foreground.

 

> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Katya  
> **   
>  (07:36:12)  
>  Fuck, cook for me Violet.
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Trixie  
> **   
>  (07:36:20)  
>  you dont want me to make u breakfast? _(weeping emoji)_

Trixie accompanies that with a blurry picture of a half-eaten granola bar that he’s clearly scarfing down while walking to the rink. With the cracked sidewalk and his beat up sneakers in the background, it’s basically the least appetizing thing Katya’s ever seen. 

 

> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Katya  
> **   
>  (07:36:31)  
>  Gross no thanks.
> 
> (07:36:43)  
>  Anyway, that’s great for Ben!
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Violet  
> **   
>  (07:36:45)  
>  RIGHT!!!
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Trixie**
> 
> (07:36:46)  
>  i dont know him
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Violet  
> **   
>  (07:36:50)  
>  i told you he’s super nice!!
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Trixie  
> **   
>  (07:37:04)  
>  ok but michelle’s gonna kill us all if a US skater thats not hers podiums at the gpf
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Violet  
> **   
>  (07:37:06)  
>  Violet emphasized a text from Trixie.
> 
> **To** **_figure s-gay-ter hoes_ ** **from Katya  
> **   
>  (07:37:10)  
>  Fuck. Correct.

Katya stuffs his phone back in his pocket and jogs the rest of the way to the rink, ignoring whatever texts follow. If he’s gonna secure a spot for himself at the final, he needs to focus and look at himself, and save pride and excitement for people who happen to be his friends for after his work is done.

It’s a mantra that he keeps repeating for the rest of the week, and what propels him forward when him and Michelle make it to Japan. It is almost easier, in a way, to be there without Violet and Trixie. Unlike Skate Canada, he doesn’t need to be even remotely concerned that he might be taking a spot at the podium away from someone he cares about. As he takes the ice for his short program, it’s just him against near strangers, with Michelle at his side and his teammates all the way on the other end of the world.

It’s 4am in Chicago and he hopes they’re watching.

 

Trixie doesn’t actually get to see Katya’s short program until many hours later, when he’s done with practice, and the three hours of conditioning and physical therapy after. In an act he refuses to call superstitious, he keeps his phone on night mode and tucked away in his duffel bag, skips his usual morning browse through social media and generally avoids all news outlets that could give away the results from the event.

He understands, of course, that it’s all a done deal and his knowing or not knowing the outcome before he gets to watch it can’t possibly change a thing but still, it feels wrong to get any sort of news about Katya’s current standing from fan account tweets or other skaters’ instagram stories.

With Michelle gone, it’s just him and Ross at the rink, and that’s a whole new kind of ruthless criticism that Trixie has to accept and work into his program in the week before he leaves for Russia. Where Michelle praises his stamina but criticizes his level of interpretation, Ross sees room for more drama but wishes Trixie would stop prioritizing technical elements over letting people see more of his emotional journey — it is, basically, two confusing polar opposites when it comes to any feedback that isn’t strictly technical, and it leaves him exhausted and moody when he gets off the ice.

His quads, at least, are almost perfectly secure and — in Ross’ own words, undeniable, so all Trixie can do is hope that’s enough to compensate for the lyricism and drama he apparently lacks.

Unsettlingly raw and heartfelt performances are _Katya’s_ thing, they always have been, and Trixie thinks about that with a justified mix of admiration and frustration as he makes it back to his apartment.

He has a week to worry about himself and all the ways in which Katya usually outdoes everything he struggles with. Now, he only has it in him to actually worry about Katya.

His own shortcomings can wait.

Trixie cues up the NBC broadcast and then only half pays attention to it while he makes lunch, mostly as an excuse to pace restlessly between his small kitchen and the living room. The event starts off shaky, with a few people taking surprising falls and scoring much lower than anticipated. By the end of the first group, Trixie’s stomach has coiled uneasily and he’s forgotten about the bowl of vegetable soup on the coffee table as he listens to the studio discussion on what might be going wrong.

Trixie hates most commentary, usually. There’s something unnerving about a sports journalist who’s definitely sitting comfortably somewhere with access to ISU files and statistics breaking down something as immediate and unpredictable as a live event. When it’s Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski, though, Trixie has to admit that very few people could ever be better equipped and qualified to sit down and speculate why four skaters in a row have sustained pretty devastating looking falls and other trip-ups in the span of half an hour.

When Tara suggests that it must mostly be nerves and pressure — the second group’s lineup is quite promising and intimidating — Trixie is torn between excitement, because that also includes Katya, and a sense of mind numbing terror at the knowledge that it could also mean that Katya would be just as rattled as everyone else.

It’s not superstition, he insists to himself, when he reaches for his phone to finally check the results ahead of time and decides against it before Twitter has reloaded. It’s _not._

By the time Katya’s group comes out to warm up, Trixie’s soup has gone cold and he’s swallowing it down like medicine just because surviving on granola bars and unbridled anxiety is not sustainable. It’s almost easier to be out there competing than to watch like this, from afar, with no way to affect the outcome at all.

The camera angles do a shitty job of really following any of the skaters’ warm ups but there are glimpses of Kim, nailing that triple axel triple toe that had messed him up in Canada, and then some Japanese skater Trixie doesn’t know running through a gorgeous fast-paced step sequence, and then Katya skidding to a stop to chat with Michelle. It’s just a brief second and there’s no way Trixie could read their lips but Michelle says something that makes Katya grin back at her, and the knot in Trixie’s stomach loosens a little at the sight.

He’s seen Katya look more scared than that. Katya, terrified, is usually pale and wide-eyed and rigid, and on the screen, he’s smiling and there’s a glint in his eyes that comes across as confidence. Trixie doesn’t realize he’s smiling back at the TV until the announcer calls out the end of the warm up, and the camera tracks Katya and the rest of the skaters off the ice.

The competitors before Katya all do well, without any major mistakes, and Tara points out hopefully that whatever was going on with everyone in the first half must be done by now.

“—so I guess we can’t blame the ice or the conditions at the arena in Hiroshima, after all,” she says through a light laugh as the Japanese skater is given a score that puts them in second place, trailing closely behind Kim. “And here’s Katya, skating last.”

On the screen, Katya does a casual circle around the center of the rink before coming to a stop for his starting position. In the moment of perfect stillness before the music starts, he stares off into the crowd, past the camera trained on his face, and Trixie holds his breath. Katya’s eyes, piercing green, determined and burning, are almost too much to take in in HD.

He’s wearing the beaded costume that goes with this program — an emerald and deep sea green sequin dream adorned with the smallest glints of red that the light only catches when he moves. It’s beyond beautiful, and Trixie stares, transfixed.

The music starts and Katya brings his hands up near his face, a dramatic gesture accompanied by a pained glance into some imaginary far away place before he takes off into his first sequence. His black gloves are similarly embellished in green and red, and he looks _opulent._

“This is Katya’s fourth senior season, and fourth season skating for the US,” Tara starts, right as the gentle piano music picks up and Katya takes off, still carrying that tortured look, into his opening spiral.

“We _keep_ talking about it but it is incredible how such a risky move — changing coach and country right at the start of his senior career, has worked out for Katya,” Johnny agrees. He says Katya's name the slavic way, all hard consonants but song-like, and Trixie repeats it into the room like he's trying it on for size,  _Katya._  He finds himself nodding, too, as though he’s part of the conversation in the studio. “Especially after this year in Pyeongchang and that silver—”

Johnny tails off with an _ah_ that Trixie mirrors with a gasp of his own as Katya flies through a triple axel half loop triple flip combination as if he’s just stepping over a crack in the pavement. When the commentary picks back up, Trixie tunes it out — he doesn’t need to hear highlights from Katya’s career or anyone else’s opinions on how marvelous this particular program is.

He can see for himself: Katya looks stunning on the ice as the piano builds, relentless, and he races, element after element, to chase whatever ignites the drama behind his performance.

“Katya is a really expressive skater, he’s always giving us a full narrative,” Johnny says fondly as Katya slides into his Ina Bauer, and though Trixie agrees, he wishes Johnny could just be quiet.

“I really like this music, too, I don’t think I’ve heard that before,” Tara supplies, because apparently no one can just let Katya skate in silence.

“Oh, it’s an old Russian song,” Johnny provides, the title rolling off his tongue in perfect Russian right as Katya executes the second jumping pass, his pièce de résistance quad lutz triple toe, more confidently than Trixie has ever seen it go before. He exhales sharply and slides off the couch to settle in front of the TV, his heart thumping in his throat.

Johnny agrees, praising the combination delightedly, with audible appreciation before he picks back up,

“...but the music, right, it’s the story of this painter who basically sells all of his belongings to buy millions of roses for his beloved—”

Trixie knows this story. It’d never occurred to him to ask Katya more about this music, he only knew it was Russian and old, but he _knows_ this story.

“—and Katya does a _wonderful_ job telling that narrative, the desperation of it—”

Katya is curled into a pancake spin, one hand still urgently reaching out.

“...that man, who’s _so_ in love, so willing to give up everything—”

Johnny's voice is a soft, far away lilt, like a fairytale shared on a cold winter night. Perhaps he keeps talking but all Trixie can hear now is the urgent piano melody, the slash of Katya’s blades against the ice, the ringing in his own ears.

He can’t breathe.

On the TV, Katya is flying through a step sequence as if it’s all he’s ever done, all he has left in him to give, all need and wanting and perfect execution. Trixie has seen this program countless times, in so many late practice sessions, and it has never looked quite like this.

Katya keeps reaching, reaching, reaching, each jump a step closer to something that keeps slipping away.

Trixie can see it now, the painter who trades everything for just one moment with someone who matters more than anything else in the world, Katya glistening in green and red like countless roses. He can’t fucking breathe. He can’t fucking believe he never thought to ask Katya about the music when he’d been right there, and not a world away, skating the best short program of his career.

As Katya spins, a flash of memory comes rushing to Trixie and he sees him doing that exact same move in the park, for an audience of children on bad ice. He remembers how Katya had laughed as he spun out of his Biellmann, as if twirling around was a joke they were just lucky to share. Now, he spins and his body is moving the same way but he’s not laughing and when he ends the move, snow spraying around his toe pick, his arms clutch around his body in a solitary embrace that is somehow devastating.

The music cuts off and the crowd roars, and Tara and Johnny pick up their elated commentary, and Trixie can’t hear any of it. He watches the highlights from Katya’s program in a daze as his mind races with the memory of when he first heard that story — right here, in his own living room, with another bowl of soup cooling on the table and his head on Katya’s chest.

Trixie presses his eyes shut and tries to remember _when_ that’d been, if Katya had started working on this program already when he was sick, if the lyrics could have just been on his mind when Trixie had asked for a bedtime story.

This isn’t about Trixie, he thinks, and his stomach twists with what feels an awful lot like shame.

It’s so selfish to think it’s about him; Katya would think he’s ridiculous for reading so much into a song — it’s just music. Katya just picks songs because they sound good, he never really cared that much. He’s not a music person, and Trixie is selfish for trying to decipher some sort of deeper story, he’s selfish and he can’t _breathe._

Katya outscores Kim and Trixie watches as he grins and waves at the kiss and cry camera, and Michelle is beaming next to him, too, and Trixie should be proud but he’s shaking.

If he could just call Violet, if explaining the whole thing wasn’t too fucking embarrassing, she’d probably be able to talk him through this, tell him it’s unreasonable to freak out because Katya happened to pick a song and tell Trixie the same story. Katya probably doesn’t even remember that evening, it wasn’t a good day, he has real things in his life to worry about and remember that aren’t Trixie and how gross he’d felt, and how he’d needed help.

Trixie turns the TV off and finally pulls out his phone, types _chicago japan time now_ into google and stares down into the screen that notifies him that it’s 7am tomorrow in Hiroshima.

Katya’s so fucking far away.

He’s also probably awake already, he has a free skate to prepare for, a competition to win.

Trixie forces his breathing into a semblance of calm, gets his fingers to work, opens up iMessage.

 

> **To Katya** **  
> **  
>  (16:07:43)  
>  KATYA  
>  **  
> **(16:07:54)  
>  I JUST WATCHED IT THAT WAS INCREDIBLE  
>    
>  (16:07:57)  
>  YOU’RE SO GOOD
> 
> (16:08:00)  
>  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Katya doesn’t text back straight away, and Trixie manages to calm down just a little as he cleans up the bowl of soup and then the rest of the kitchen, for good measure, while glancing at his phone more often than he cares to admit, even just to himself. He shouldn’t expect Katya to be on his phone at all times ready to answer his texts. That would be unreasonable, too. A little delay is nothing to worry about.

His chest feels tight in the way it usually does after a good cry — settled now, and full of air, but still off somehow, uneasy. His mind is going in the same circles of reasoning, again and again, until he convinces himself that just one more text wouldn’t come off too out of character, 

 

> **To Katya**  
>    
>  (16:37:22)  
>  i can’t wait to talk to you about this program.

He’s just about to press send on a message for good luck — _idk if you’ll see this before your FS but good luck kill it you’re the best!!!!!!!!!!! (red heart emoji)_ — when his phone rings in his hand. Trixie stares down at it for a moment, draws in a deep breath, and swipes to accept the call,

“Katya. Hi.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh y'all wanted a perspective switch?   
>  happy holidaze & merry christmastime from my house to yours, may your yuletide be the gayest.    
>  as usual, all i want for christmas is comments, and i thank you guys so much for the love you've shown this fic already!   
>  (shoutout to M and Dandee, once again, for just being supportive and great in general)

**Author's Note:**

> i thrive on feedback so yell at me here, or over on tumblr @ swanboulet.    
>  i'm not a figure skater nor do i claim to be (but i am alooooone), so all skating inaccuracies are my own, and in favor of the willing suspension of disbelief for the sake of drama 


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